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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/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          1st May 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
  32 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
  33 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
  34 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
  35 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
  36 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
  37 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
  38
  39 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
  40 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
  41 the 2012 numbers are from
  42 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
  43 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
  44 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
  45 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
  46 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
  47
  48 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
  49 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
  50 enough.  See for example a
  51 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
  52 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
  53 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
  54 to get the storage requirements.</p>
  55
  56 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
  57 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
  58 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
  59 it to take space, power and redundancy.  It could be much higher with
  60 high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
  61
  62 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
  63 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
  64 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
  65 and large organisations:</p>
  66
  67 <table border="1">
  68 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
  69 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
  70 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
  71 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill/ 250 000</td></tr>
  72 </table>
  73
  74 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
  75 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
  76 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
  77 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
  78 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
  79 collecting the data?</p>
  80
  81       </div>
  82       <div class="tags">
  83
  84
  85         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
  86
  87
  88       </div>
  89     </div>
  90     <div class="padding"></div>
  91
  92     <div class="entry">
  93       <div class="title">
  94         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
  95       </div>
  96       <div class="date">
  97         26th April 2015
  98       </div>
  99       <div class="body">
 100         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
 101 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
 102 announcement today</a>:</p>
 103
 104 <pre>
 105 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
 106 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
 107 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
 108 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
 109
 110 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
 111 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
 112 later today ;)
 113
 114 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
 115 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
 116 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
 117 be possible and encouraged!
 118
 119 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
 120 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
 121
 122 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
 123 operating system for schools, universities and other
 124 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
 125 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
 126 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
 127 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
 128 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
 129 days.
 130
 131 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
 132 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
 133 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
 134 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
 135
 136 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 137 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 138 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
 139 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
 140 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
 141 least 5 characters!
 142
 143 == Where to download ==
 144
 145 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
 146 can be downloaded at the following locations:
 147
 148     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
 149     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
 150
 151 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
 152
 153 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
 154 available, with more software included (saving additional download
 155 time):
 156
 157     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 158     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 159
 160 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
 161
 162 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
 163 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
 164 options.
 165
 166 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
 167
 168 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
 169 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
 170
 171 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
 172 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
 173 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
 174 online version of the translated manual.
 175
 176 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
 177 release notes and the installation manual:
 178 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
 179 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
 180
 181
 182 == Errata / known problems ==
 183
 184     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
 185     DHCP (#780461).
 186
 187     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
 188
 189 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
 190 hostname immediately.
 191
 192 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
 193 more current and complete list.
 194
 195 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
 196
 197 === Software updates ===
 198
 199 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
 200
 201  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
 202    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
 203    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
 204
 205  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
 206    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
 207    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
 208    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
 209      the others see the manual.
 210  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
 211  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
 212  * GOsa 2.7.4
 213  * LTSP 5.5.4
 214  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 215  * new boot framework: systemd
 216  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
 217  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 218  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 219  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
 220  * golearn 0.9
 221  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 222  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 223  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
 224  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
 225    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
 226
 227 === Installation changes ===
 228
 229     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
 230     for the hardware present.
 231
 232 === Fixed bugs ===
 233
 234 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
 235 from a user perspective:
 236
 237  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 238    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 239    information is corrected (710362)
 240
 241  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
 242
 243 === Sugar desktop removed ===
 244
 245 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
 246 available in Debian Edu jessie.
 247
 248
 249 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
 250
 251 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
 252 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 253 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
 254 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 255 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 256 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 257 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 258 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 259 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 260 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 261 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 262 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 263 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 264 environment.
 265
 266 == About Debian ==
 267
 268 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 269 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 270 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 271 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 272 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 273 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 274 operating system.
 275
 276 == Thanks ==
 277
 278 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
 279 You rock.
 280 </pre>
 281
 282       </div>
 283       <div class="tags">
 284
 285
 286         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>.
 287
 288
 289       </div>
 290     </div>
 291     <div class="padding"></div>
 292
 293     <div class="entry">
 294       <div class="title">
 295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
 296       </div>
 297       <div class="date">
 298         15th April 2015
 299       </div>
 300       <div class="body">
 301         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
 302 computer system for schools I've involved in,
 303 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
 304 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
 305 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
 306 Agarwal.</p>
 307
 308 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 309
 310 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
 311 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
 312 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
 313 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
 314 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
 315 few software start-ups as well.</p>
 316
 317 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 318 project?</strong></p>
 319
 320 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
 321 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
 322 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
 323 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
 324 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
 325 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
 326 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
 327
 328 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 329 Edu?</strong></p>
 330
 331 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
 332 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
 333 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
 334 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
 335 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
 336 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
 337 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
 338 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
 339
 340 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
 341 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
 342 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
 343 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
 344 for the developer per-se.</p>
 345
 346 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 347 Edu?</strong></p>
 348
 349 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
 350 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
 351 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
 352
 353 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
 354 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
 355 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
 356 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
 357 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
 358 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
 359 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
 360
 361 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
 362 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
 363 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
 364
 365 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
 366 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
 367 interactive manner. While sites such as the
 368 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
 369 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
 370 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
 371 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
 372 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
 373 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
 374 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
 375 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
 376 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
 377 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
 378 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
 379
 380 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
 381 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
 382 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
 383 also be used.</p>
 384
 385 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
 386 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
 387 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
 388 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
 389 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
 390 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
 391 the user's input.</p>
 392
 393 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
 394 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
 395 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
 396 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
 397 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
 398 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
 399 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
 400 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
 401
 402 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
 403 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
 404 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
 405 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
 406 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
 407 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
 408 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
 409 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
 410
 411 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 412
 413 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
 414 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
 415 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
 416 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
 417 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
 418
 419 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 420 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 421
 422 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
 423 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
 424 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
 425 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
 426 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
 427 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
 428
 429 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
 430 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
 431 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
 432 well.</p>
 433
 434 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
 435 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
 436 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
 437 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
 438
 439 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
 440 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
 441 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
 442 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
 443 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
 444 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
 445 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
 446 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
 447 releases.</p>
 448
 449 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
 450 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
 451 is aimed at.
 452
 453 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
 454 around 2 years, and
 455 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
 456 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
 457 there was :</p>
 458
 459 <ol>
 460
 461   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
 462    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
 463    portion/syllabus given.</li>
 464
 465   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
 466    is in the syllabus.</li>
 467
 468   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
 469    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
 470    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
 471    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
 472    as recognizable as say a
 473    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
 474    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
 475    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
 476    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
 477    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
 478    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
 479
 480 </ol>
 481
 482       </div>
 483       <div class="tags">
 484
 485
 486         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>.
 487
 488
 489       </div>
 490     </div>
 491     <div class="padding"></div>
 492
 493     <div class="entry">
 494       <div class="title">
 495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
 496       </div>
 497       <div class="date">
 498          7th April 2015
 499       </div>
 500       <div class="body">
 501         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
 502 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
 503 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
 504
 505 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
 506 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
 507 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
 508 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
 509 part of my involvement with the
 510 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
 511 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
 512 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
 513 Hackathon with our friends
 514 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
 515 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
 516 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
 517 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
 518
 519 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
 520 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
 521
 522       </div>
 523       <div class="tags">
 524
 525
 526         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 527
 528
 529       </div>
 530     </div>
 531     <div class="padding"></div>
 532
 533     <div class="entry">
 534       <div class="title">
 535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
 536       </div>
 537       <div class="date">
 538          4th April 2015
 539       </div>
 540       <div class="body">
 541         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
 542 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 543 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 544 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
 545 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
 546 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
 547 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
 548 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 549 project pages.  You can also check out the
 550 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
 551 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 552 and HTML version available in the
 553 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
 554 directory</a>.</p>
 555
 556 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
 557 you find any.</p>
 558
 559       </div>
 560       <div class="tags">
 561
 562
 563         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>.
 564
 565
 566       </div>
 567     </div>
 568     <div class="padding"></div>
 569
 570     <div class="entry">
 571       <div class="title">
 572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
 573       </div>
 574       <div class="date">
 575          9th March 2015
 576       </div>
 577       <div class="body">
 578         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
 579 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
 580 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
 581 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
 582 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
 583 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
 584 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
 585 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
 586 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
 587 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
 588 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
 589 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
 590 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
 591 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
 592
 593 <p>The list of NUUG videos
 594 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
 595 include things like a
 596 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
 597 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
 598 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
 599 re-implementation</a>, the
 600 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
 601 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
 602 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
 603 video</A> and many others.</p>
 604
 605 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
 606 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
 607 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
 608 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
 609 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
 610 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
 611 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
 612 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
 613 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 614 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
 615
 616 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
 617 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
 618 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
 619 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
 620 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
 621 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
 622 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
 623 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
 624 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
 625 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
 626
 627       </div>
 628       <div class="tags">
 629
 630
 631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 632
 633
 634       </div>
 635     </div>
 636     <div class="padding"></div>
 637
 638     <div class="entry">
 639       <div class="title">
 640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
 641       </div>
 642       <div class="date">
 643         28th February 2015
 644       </div>
 645       <div class="body">
 646         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
 647 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
 648 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
 649 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
 650 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
 651 made for
 652 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
 653 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
 654 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
 655 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
 656 a friend have
 657 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
 658 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
 659 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
 660 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
 661 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
 662 it happen ourselves.
 663 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
 664 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
 665 is.</p>
 666
 667 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
 668 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
 669
 670       </div>
 671       <div class="tags">
 672
 673
 674         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 675
 676
 677       </div>
 678     </div>
 679     <div class="padding"></div>
 680
 681     <div class="entry">
 682       <div class="title">
 683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
 684       </div>
 685       <div class="date">
 686         25th February 2015
 687       </div>
 688       <div class="body">
 689         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
 690 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
 691 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
 692 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
 693 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
 694 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
 695 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
 696 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
 697 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
 698 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
 699 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
 700 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
 701 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
 702 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
 703 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
 704 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
 705 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
 706
 707 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
 708 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
 709 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
 710 with VLC.</p>
 711
 712 <ul>
 713   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
 714   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
 715 </ul>
 716
 717 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
 718 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
 719 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
 720 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
 721 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
 722 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
 723 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
 724
 725 <blockquote><pre>
 726 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
 727  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
 728  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
 729 </pre></blockquote>
 730
 731 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
 732 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
 733 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
 734 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
 735
 736       </div>
 737       <div class="tags">
 738
 739
 740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 741
 742
 743       </div>
 744     </div>
 745     <div class="padding"></div>
 746
 747     <div class="entry">
 748       <div class="title">
 749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
 750       </div>
 751       <div class="date">
 752         10th February 2015
 753       </div>
 754       <div class="body">
 755         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
 756 that
 757 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
 758 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
 759 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
 760 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
 761 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
 762 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
 763 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
 764 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
 765 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
 766 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
 767 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
 768 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
 769 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
 770 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
 771 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
 772
 773 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
 774 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
 775 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
 776 controversy about these scanners.</p>
 777
 778 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
 779 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
 780 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
 781
 782       </div>
 783       <div class="tags">
 784
 785
 786         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>.
 787
 788
 789       </div>
 790     </div>
 791     <div class="padding"></div>
 792
 793     <div class="entry">
 794       <div class="title">
 795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
 796       </div>
 797       <div class="date">
 798          8th February 2015
 799       </div>
 800       <div class="body">
 801         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
 802 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
 803 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
 804 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
 805 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
 806 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
 807 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
 808 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
 809 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
 810 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
 811 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
 812 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
 813
 814 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
 815 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
 816 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
 817 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
 818
 819 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
 820 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
 821 distribute the TV content.  The
 822 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
 823 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
 824 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
 825 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
 826 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
 827 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
 828 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
 829 following activity, we now have the schedule
 830 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
 831 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
 832 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
 833 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
 834
 835 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
 836 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
 837 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
 838 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
 839 streams are working as they should.</p>
 840
 841       </div>
 842       <div class="tags">
 843
 844
 845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 846
 847
 848       </div>
 849     </div>
 850     <div class="padding"></div>
 851
 852     <div class="entry">
 853       <div class="title">
 854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
 855       </div>
 856       <div class="date">
 857         12th January 2015
 858       </div>
 859       <div class="body">
 860         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
 861 Foundation</a> announced a new video
 862 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
 863 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
 864 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
 865 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
 866 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
 867 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
 868
 869 <p>But today I was told that
 870 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
 871 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
 872 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
 873 available in
 874 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
 875 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
 876 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
 877
 878 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
 879 Libreplanet
 880 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
 881 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
 882
 883       </div>
 884       <div class="tags">
 885
 886
 887         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 888
 889
 890       </div>
 891     </div>
 892     <div class="padding"></div>
 893
 894     <div class="entry">
 895       <div class="title">
 896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
 897       </div>
 898       <div class="date">
 899         30th December 2014
 900       </div>
 901       <div class="body">
 902         <p>I am very happy that we in the
 903 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
 904 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
 905 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
 906 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
 907 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
 908 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
 909 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
 910 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
 911 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
 912 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
 913
 914 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
 915 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
 916 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
 917 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
 918 reports in public.</p>
 919
 920       </div>
 921       <div class="tags">
 922
 923
 924         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>.
 925
 926
 927       </div>
 928     </div>
 929     <div class="padding"></div>
 930
 931     <div class="entry">
 932       <div class="title">
 933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
 934       </div>
 935       <div class="date">
 936         19th December 2014
 937       </div>
 938       <div class="body">
 939         <p>So, Sony caved in
 940 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
 941 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
 942 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
 943 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
 944 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
 945 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
 946 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
 947 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
 948 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
 949 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
 950 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
 951 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
 952 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
 953
 954 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
 955 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
 956 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
 957 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
 958
 959 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
 960 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
 961 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
 962 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
 963 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
 964 income. :)</p>
 965
 966       </div>
 967       <div class="tags">
 968
 969
 970         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 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/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="date">
 982         22nd November 2014
 983       </div>
 984       <div class="body">
 985         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 986 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 987 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 988 courtesy of
 989 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 990 Schubert</a> and
 991 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 992 McVittie</a>.
 993
 994 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 995 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 996 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 997 you upgrade:</p>
 998
 999 <p><blockquote><pre>
1000 Package: systemd-sysv
1001 Pin: release o=Debian
1002 Pin-Priority: -1
1003 </pre></blockquote><p>
1004
1005 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1006 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1007 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1008 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1009 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1010
1011 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1012 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1013 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1014 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1015 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1016 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1017
1018 <p><blockquote><pre>
1019 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1020 </pre></blockquote><p>
1021
1022 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1023
1024 <p><blockquote><pre>
1025 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1026 </pre></blockquote><p>
1027
1028 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1029 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1030
1031 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1032 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1033 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1034 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1035 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1036 Jessie is released.</p>
1037
1038 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1039 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1040 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1041 line.</p>
1042
1043       </div>
1044       <div class="tags">
1045
1046
1047         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>.
1048
1049
1050       </div>
1051     </div>
1052     <div class="padding"></div>
1053
1054     <div class="entry">
1055       <div class="title">
1056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1057       </div>
1058       <div class="date">
1059         10th November 2014
1060       </div>
1061       <div class="body">
1062         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1063 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1064 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1065
1066 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1067 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1068 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1069 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1070 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1071 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1072 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1073 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1074 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1075 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1076 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1077 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1078 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1079 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1080 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1081
1082 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1083 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1084 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1085 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1086 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1087 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1088 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1089 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1090 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1091 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1092 were fairly easy, and
1093 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1094 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1095 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1096 useful approach.</p>
1097
1098 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1099 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1100 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1101 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1102 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1103 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1104 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1105 this:</p>
1106
1107 <p><blockquote><pre>
1108 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1109   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1110 </pre></blockquote></p>
1111
1112 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1113 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1114
1115 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1116 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1117 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1118 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1119 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1120 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1121 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1122 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1123 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1124 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1125 system.</p>
1126
1127 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1128 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1129 SMTorP. :)</p>
1130
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="tags">
1133
1134
1135         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1136
1137
1138       </div>
1139     </div>
1140     <div class="padding"></div>
1141
1142     <div class="entry">
1143       <div class="title">
1144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
1145       </div>
1146       <div class="date">
1147         27th October 2014
1148       </div>
1149       <div class="body">
1150         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
1151 sent out
1152 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
1153 announcement</a>:</p>
1154
1155 <pre>
1156 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
1157 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
1158
1159 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
1160 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
1161 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
1162 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
1163 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
1164 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
1165 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
1166
1167 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1168 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1169 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
1170 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
1171 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
1172 of at least 5 characters!
1173
1174  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
1175
1176 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
1177 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
1178 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
1179 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
1180 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
1181
1182 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
1183 mostly in Germany and Norway.
1184
1185 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
1186 ===============================
1187
1188 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
1189 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1190 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1191 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1192 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1193 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1194 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1195 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
1196 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1197 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1198 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1199 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
1200 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1201 environment.
1202
1203  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
1204  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
1205
1206 Full release notes and manual
1207 =============================
1208
1209 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
1210 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
1211 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
1212 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
1213 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
1214
1215  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
1216  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
1217
1218 Where to get it
1219 ---------------
1220
1221 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
1222
1223  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
1224  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
1225  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
1226
1227 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
1228
1229 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
1230 ===============================================================================
1231
1232
1233 Installation changes
1234 --------------------
1235
1236  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
1237
1238 Software updates
1239 ----------------
1240
1241 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
1242
1243  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
1244  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
1245    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
1246    choose one of the others see manual.)
1247  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
1248  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
1249  * GOsa 2.7.4
1250  * LTSP 5.5.4
1251  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1252  * new boot framework: systemd
1253  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
1254  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1255  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1256  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
1257  * golearn 0.9
1258  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1259  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1260  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
1261    installation.
1262  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
1263    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
1264
1265  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
1266  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
1267
1268 Fixed bugs
1269 ----------
1270
1271  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1272    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1273    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
1274  * and many others.
1275
1276 Documentation and translation updates
1277 -------------------------------------
1278
1279  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
1280    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
1281    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
1282
1283 Other changes
1284 -------------
1285
1286  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
1287    server takes more time.
1288  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
1289    doesn't work.
1290
1291 Regressions / known problems
1292 ----------------------------
1293
1294  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
1295    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
1296    and Debian bug #762103).
1297  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
1298    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
1299  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
1300    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
1301    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
1302
1303 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
1304
1305  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
1306
1307 How to report bugs
1308 ------------------
1309
1310 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
1311
1312 About Debian
1313 ============
1314
1315 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1316 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1317 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1318 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1319 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1320 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1321 operating system.
1322
1323 Contact Information
1324 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
1325 mail to press@debian.org.
1326
1327  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
1328 </pre>
1329
1330       </div>
1331       <div class="tags">
1332
1333
1334         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>.
1335
1336
1337       </div>
1338     </div>
1339     <div class="padding"></div>
1340
1341     <div class="entry">
1342       <div class="title">
1343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
1344       </div>
1345       <div class="date">
1346         23rd October 2014
1347       </div>
1348       <div class="body">
1349         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
1350 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
1351 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
1352 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
1353 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
1354 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
1355 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
1356 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
1357 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
1358 live.</p>
1359
1360 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
1361 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
1362 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
1363 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
1364 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
1365 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
1366 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
1367 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
1368
1369       </div>
1370       <div class="tags">
1371
1372
1373         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>.
1374
1375
1376       </div>
1377     </div>
1378     <div class="padding"></div>
1379
1380     <div class="entry">
1381       <div class="title">
1382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
1383       </div>
1384       <div class="date">
1385         22nd October 2014
1386       </div>
1387       <div class="body">
1388         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1389 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1390 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1391 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1392 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1393 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1394 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1395 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1396 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1397 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1398 lists I recently took over:</p>
1399
1400 <p><blockquote><pre>
1401 % time listadmin xiph
1402 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1403 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1404
1405 real    0m1.709s
1406 user    0m0.232s
1407 sys     0m0.012s
1408 %
1409 </pre></blockquote></p>
1410
1411 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1412 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1413 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1414 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1415 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1416 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1417 program.</p>
1418
1419 <p>If you install
1420 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1421 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1422 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1423
1424 <p><blockquote><pre>
1425 username username@example.org
1426 spamlevel 23
1427 default discard
1428 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1429
1430 password secret
1431 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1432 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1433
1434 password hidden
1435 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1436 </pre></blockquote></p>
1437
1438 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1439 learn the details.</p>
1440
1441 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1442 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1443 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1444 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1445
1446 <p><blockquote><pre>
1447 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1448 </pre></blockquote></p>
1449
1450 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1451 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1452 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1453 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1454 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1455 email.</p>
1456
1457 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1458 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1459 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1460 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1461 software.</p>
1462
1463 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1464 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1465 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1466
1467 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1468 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1469 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1470 sure why.</p>
1471
1472       </div>
1473       <div class="tags">
1474
1475
1476         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>.
1477
1478
1479       </div>
1480     </div>
1481     <div class="padding"></div>
1482
1483     <div class="entry">
1484       <div class="title">
1485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1486       </div>
1487       <div class="date">
1488         17th October 2014
1489       </div>
1490       <div class="body">
1491         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1492 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1493 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1494 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1495 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1496 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1497 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1498
1499 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1500 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1501 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1502 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1503 of this story.)</p>
1504
1505 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1506 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1507 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1508 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1509 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1510 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1511 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1512 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1513 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1514 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1515
1516 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1517 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1518 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1519 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1520
1521 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1522 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1523
1524 <p><blockquote><pre>
1525 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1526 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1527 </pre></blockquote></p>
1528
1529 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1530 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1531 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1532 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1533 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1534 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1535 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1536 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1537
1538 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1539 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1540
1541 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1542 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1543 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1544 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1545 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1546
1547 <p><blockquote><pre>
1548 Task: isenkram-packages
1549 Section: hardware
1550 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1551  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1552  proposed.
1553 Test-new-install: show show
1554 Relevance: 8
1555 Packages: for-current-hardware
1556
1557 Task: isenkram-firmware
1558 Section: hardware
1559 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1560  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1561  packages are proposed.
1562 Test-new-install: mark show
1563 Relevance: 8
1564 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1565 </pre></blockquote></p>
1566
1567 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1568 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1569 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1570 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1571 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1572
1573 <p><blockquote><pre>
1574 #!/bin/sh
1575 #
1576 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1577 export PATH
1578 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1579 </pre></blockquote></p>
1580
1581 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1582 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1583
1584 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1585 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1586 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1587 install.</p>
1588
1589 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1590 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1591 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1592
1593       </div>
1594       <div class="tags">
1595
1596
1597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1598
1599
1600       </div>
1601     </div>
1602     <div class="padding"></div>
1603
1604     <div class="entry">
1605       <div class="title">
1606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
1607       </div>
1608       <div class="date">
1609          4th October 2014
1610       </div>
1611       <div class="body">
1612         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1613 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1614 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1615 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1616
1617 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1618
1619 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1620 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1621 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1622
1623       </div>
1624       <div class="tags">
1625
1626
1627         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>.
1628
1629
1630       </div>
1631     </div>
1632     <div class="padding"></div>
1633
1634     <div class="entry">
1635       <div class="title">
1636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
1637       </div>
1638       <div class="date">
1639          4th October 2014
1640       </div>
1641       <div class="body">
1642         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1643 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1644 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1645 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1646 Dibb.</p>
1647
1648 <p>I just wrapped up
1649 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1650 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1651 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1652 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1653 0.17.</p>
1654
1655 <ul>
1656
1657  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1658  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1659    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1660  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1661  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1662  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1663  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1664  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1665  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1666    the palette size is the same.</li>
1667  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1668  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1669  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1670  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1671    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1672
1673 </ul>
1674
1675 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1676 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1677 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1678
1679       </div>
1680       <div class="tags">
1681
1682
1683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1684
1685
1686       </div>
1687     </div>
1688     <div class="padding"></div>
1689
1690     <div class="entry">
1691       <div class="title">
1692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
1693       </div>
1694       <div class="date">
1695         26th September 2014
1696       </div>
1697       <div class="body">
1698         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1699 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1700 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1701 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1702 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1703 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1704 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1705 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1706 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1707 future.  The
1708 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1709 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1710 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1711 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1712 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1713
1714 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1715 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1716 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1717 or rsync (use
1718 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1719 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1720 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1721 install with some tweaking.</p>
1722
1723 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1724 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1725
1726 <p><blockquote><pre>
1727 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1728 </pre></blockquote></p>
1729
1730 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1731 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1732 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1733 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1734
1735 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1736 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1737 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1738 your need.</p>
1739
1740 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1741 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1742 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1743 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1744 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1745 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1746 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1747 days.</p>
1748
1749 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1750 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1751 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1752 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1753 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1754 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1755 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1756 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1757 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1758
1759 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1760 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1761 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1762
1763       </div>
1764       <div class="tags">
1765
1766
1767         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>.
1768
1769
1770       </div>
1771     </div>
1772     <div class="padding"></div>
1773
1774     <div class="entry">
1775       <div class="title">
1776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
1777       </div>
1778       <div class="date">
1779         25th September 2014
1780       </div>
1781       <div class="body">
1782         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1783 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1784 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1785 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1786 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1787 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1788 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1789 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1790 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1791 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1792 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1793 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1794 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1795
1796 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1797 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1798 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1799 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1800 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1801 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1802 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1803 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1804 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1805 list</a>. :)</p>
1806
1807       </div>
1808       <div class="tags">
1809
1810
1811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1812
1813
1814       </div>
1815     </div>
1816     <div class="padding"></div>
1817
1818     <div class="entry">
1819       <div class="title">
1820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
1821       </div>
1822       <div class="date">
1823         16th September 2014
1824       </div>
1825       <div class="body">
1826         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1827 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1828 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1829 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1830 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1831 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1832 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1833 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1834 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1835 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1836 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1837 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1838 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1839 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1840
1841 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1842 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1843 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1844 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1845 depend on the small and clever package
1846 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1847 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1848 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1849 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1850 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1851 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1852 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1853 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1854 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1855 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1856 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1857
1858 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1859 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1860 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1861 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1862 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1863 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1864 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1865 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1866 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1867 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1868 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1869 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1870 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1871 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1872 dialog.</p>
1873
1874 <p><table>
1875
1876 <tr>
1877 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1878 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1879 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1880 <th>Reduction</th>
1881 </tr>
1882
1883 <tr>
1884 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1885 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1886 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1887 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1888 </tr>
1889
1890 <tr>
1891 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1892 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1893 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1894 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1895 </tr>
1896
1897 <tr>
1898 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1899 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1900 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1901 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1902 </tr>
1903
1904 <tr>
1905 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1906 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1907 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1908 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1909 </tr>
1910
1911 <tr>
1912 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1913 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1914 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1915 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1916 </tr>
1917
1918 </table></p>
1919
1920 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1921 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1922 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1923 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1924 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1925 installed.</p>
1926
1927 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1928 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1929 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1930 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1931 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1932 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1933 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1934 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1935 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1936 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1937 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1938 for the entire installation.</p>
1939
1940 <p>I've implemented this in the
1941 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1942 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1943 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1944 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1945 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1946
1947 <p><blockquote><pre>
1948 #!/bin/sh
1949 set -e
1950 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1951 info() {
1952     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1953 }
1954 error() {
1955     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1956 }
1957 override_install() {
1958     apt-install eatmydata || true
1959     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1960         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1961             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1962             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1963             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1964                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1965                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1966                     > /target$file.edu
1967                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1968                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1969                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1970                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1971             else
1972                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1973             fi
1974         done
1975     else
1976         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1977     fi
1978 }
1979
1980 override_install
1981 </pre></blockquote></p>
1982
1983 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1984 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1985
1986 <p><blockquote><pre>
1987 #! /bin/sh -e
1988 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1989 error() {
1990     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1991 }
1992 remove_install_override() {
1993     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1994         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1995         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1996             rm /target$file
1997             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1998                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1999             rm /target$file.edu
2000         else
2001             error "Missing divert for $file."
2002         fi
2003     done
2004     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2005 }
2006
2007 remove_install_override
2008 </pre></blockquote></p>
2009
2010 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2011 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2012 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2013
2014 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2015 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2016 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2017 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2018 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2019 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2020 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2021 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2022 everyone.</p>
2023
2024 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2025 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2026 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2027 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2028
2029 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2030 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2031 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2032 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2033 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2034
2035 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2036 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2037 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2038 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2039 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2040
2041       </div>
2042       <div class="tags">
2043
2044
2045         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>.
2046
2047
2048       </div>
2049     </div>
2050     <div class="padding"></div>
2051
2052     <div class="entry">
2053       <div class="title">
2054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
2055       </div>
2056       <div class="date">
2057         10th September 2014
2058       </div>
2059       <div class="body">
2060         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2061 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2062 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2063 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2064 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2065 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2066 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2067 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2068 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2069 those problems are gone now.</p>
2070
2071 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2072 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2073 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2074 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2075 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2076
2077 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2078 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2079 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2080
2081 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2082 line:</p>
2083
2084 <p><blockquote><pre>
2085 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2086 </pre></blockquote></p>
2087
2088 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2089 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2090 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2091 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2092
2093 <p><blockquote><pre>
2094 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2095 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2096 %
2097 </pre></blockquote></p>
2098
2099 <p>Now if only
2100 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2101 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2102 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2103 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2104 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2105 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2106 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2107 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
2108 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
2109
2110       </div>
2111       <div class="tags">
2112
2113
2114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2115
2116
2117       </div>
2118     </div>
2119     <div class="padding"></div>
2120
2121     <div class="entry">
2122       <div class="title">
2123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
2124       </div>
2125       <div class="date">
2126         25th August 2014
2127       </div>
2128       <div class="body">
2129         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
2130 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
2131 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
2132 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
2133 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
2134 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
2135 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
2136 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
2137 am not sure.
2138 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
2139 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
2140 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
2141 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
2142 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
2143 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
2144 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
2145 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
2146 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
2147 licenses are.</p>
2148
2149 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
2150 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
2151 end user</a>
2152 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
2153 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
2154
2155 <p><blockquote>
2156 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
2157 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
2158
2159 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
2160 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
2161 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
2162 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
2163 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
2164 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
2165 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
2166 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
2167 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
2168 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
2169 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
2170 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
2171 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
2172 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
2173 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
2174 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
2175 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
2176 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
2177
2178 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
2179 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
2180
2181 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
2182 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
2183 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
2184 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
2185 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
2186 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
2187 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
2188 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
2189 </blockquote></p>
2190
2191 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
2192 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
2193
2194 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
2195 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
2196
2197 <p><blockquote>
2198
2199 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
2200 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
2201 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
2202 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
2203 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
2204 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
2205 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
2206 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
2207 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
2208 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
2209 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
2210 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
2211
2212 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
2213 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
2214 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
2215 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
2216 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
2217 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
2218 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
2219 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
2220 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
2221 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
2222 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
2223 additional details.</p>
2224
2225 </blockquote></p>
2226
2227 <p>Some free software like
2228 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
2229 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
2230 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
2231 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
2232
2233       </div>
2234       <div class="tags">
2235
2236
2237         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
2238
2239
2240       </div>
2241     </div>
2242     <div class="padding"></div>
2243
2244     <div class="entry">
2245       <div class="title">
2246         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
2247       </div>
2248       <div class="date">
2249         31st July 2014
2250       </div>
2251       <div class="body">
2252         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
2253 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2254 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
2255 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
2256 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
2257 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
2258
2259 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2260
2261 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
2262 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
2263 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
2264 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
2265 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
2266 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
2267 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
2268 works with Windows . :-(</p>
2269
2270 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
2271 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
2272 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
2273 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
2274 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
2275 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
2276
2277 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2278 project?</strong></p>
2279
2280 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
2281 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
2282 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
2283 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
2284 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
2285 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
2286 with this job.</p>
2287
2288 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2289 Edu?</strong></p>
2290
2291 <p>The independence.</p>
2292
2293 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
2294 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
2295 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
2296
2297 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
2298 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
2299 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
2300 working reliable. </p>
2301
2302 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
2303 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
2304 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
2305 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
2306 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
2307 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
2308 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
2309 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
2310
2311 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2312 Edu?</strong></p>
2313
2314 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
2315 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
2316 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
2317
2318 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2319
2320 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
2321 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
2322
2323 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2324 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2325
2326 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
2327 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
2328 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
2329 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
2330 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
2331 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
2332 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
2333
2334       </div>
2335       <div class="tags">
2336
2337
2338         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>.
2339
2340
2341       </div>
2342     </div>
2343     <div class="padding"></div>
2344
2345     <div class="entry">
2346       <div class="title">
2347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="date">
2350         23rd July 2014
2351       </div>
2352       <div class="body">
2353         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
2354 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2355 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2356 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
2357 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
2358 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
2359 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
2360 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
2361 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
2362 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
2363 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
2364 the translation show this very well:</p>
2365
2366 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2367
2368 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
2369 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
2370 project pages and the
2371 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
2372 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2373 and HTML version available in the
2374 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
2375 directory</a>.</p>
2376
2377 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
2378 you find any.</p>
2379
2380       </div>
2381       <div class="tags">
2382
2383
2384         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>.
2385
2386
2387       </div>
2388     </div>
2389     <div class="padding"></div>
2390
2391     <div class="entry">
2392       <div class="title">
2393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
2394       </div>
2395       <div class="date">
2396         17th June 2014
2397       </div>
2398       <div class="body">
2399         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2400 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2401 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2402 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2403 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2404
2405 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2406 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2407 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2408 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2409 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2410 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2411 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2412 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2413 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2414 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2415 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2416 goals.</p>
2417
2418 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2419 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2420 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2421 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2422 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2423 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2424 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2425 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2426 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2427 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2428 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2429 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2430 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2431 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2432 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2433 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2434 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2435 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2436 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2437 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2438 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2439 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2440 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2441 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2442
2443 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2444 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2445 track the English original.  For this we use the
2446 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2447 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2448 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2449 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2450 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2451 files), which the translations update with the native language
2452 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2453 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2454 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2455 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2456 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2457 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2458 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2459 of the documentation.</p>
2460
2461 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2462 recommend using
2463 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2464 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2465 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2466 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2467 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2468 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2469 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2470 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2471
2472 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2473 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2474 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2475 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2476 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2477 translated images by storing translated versions in
2478 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2479 package maintainers know more.</p>
2480
2481 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2482 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2483 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2484 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2485 PDF version</a> or the
2486 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2487 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2488 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2489
2490 <p>To learn more, check out
2491 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2492 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2493 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2494 manual on the wiki</a> and
2495 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2496 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2497
2498       </div>
2499       <div class="tags">
2500
2501
2502         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2503
2504
2505       </div>
2506     </div>
2507     <div class="padding"></div>
2508
2509     <div class="entry">
2510       <div class="title">
2511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
2512       </div>
2513       <div class="date">
2514         29th May 2014
2515       </div>
2516       <div class="body">
2517         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
2518 in my car, connected to
2519 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
2520 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
2521 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
2522 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
2523 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
2524 such car computer.</p>
2525
2526 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
2527
2528 <ul>
2529
2530  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
2531
2532  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
2533    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
2534    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
2535    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
2536    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
2537
2538  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
2539    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
2540    route.</li>
2541
2542  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
2543
2544  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
2545    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
2546    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
2547    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
2548    connection do not work.</li>
2549
2550  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
2551    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
2552
2553  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
2554    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
2555
2556  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
2557    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
2558
2559 </ul>
2560
2561 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
2562 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
2563
2564       </div>
2565       <div class="tags">
2566
2567
2568         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2569
2570
2571       </div>
2572     </div>
2573     <div class="padding"></div>
2574
2575     <div class="entry">
2576       <div class="title">
2577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
2578       </div>
2579       <div class="date">
2580         29th April 2014
2581       </div>
2582       <div class="body">
2583         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
2584 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
2585 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
2586 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
2587 newer AVM2 format - see
2588 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
2589 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
2590 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
2591 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
2592 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
2593 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
2594 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
2595 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
2596 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
2597 sites do not work yet.</p>
2598
2599 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
2600 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
2601 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
2602 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
2603 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
2604 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
2605 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
2606 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
2607 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
2608 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
2609 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
2610
2611 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
2612 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
2613 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
2614 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
2615 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
2616 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
2617 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
2618
2619 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
2620 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
2621 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
2622 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
2623 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
2624
2625       </div>
2626       <div class="tags">
2627
2628
2629         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>.
2630
2631
2632       </div>
2633     </div>
2634     <div class="padding"></div>
2635
2636     <div class="entry">
2637       <div class="title">
2638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
2639       </div>
2640       <div class="date">
2641         23rd April 2014
2642       </div>
2643       <div class="body">
2644         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2645 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2646 So I implemented one, using
2647 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2648 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2649 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2650 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2651 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2652 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2653
2654 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2655 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2656 packages to install.  The first part is in
2657 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2658 this:</p>
2659
2660 <p><blockquote><pre>
2661 Task: isenkram
2662 Section: hardware
2663 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2664  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2665  proposed.
2666 Test-new-install: mark show
2667 Relevance: 8
2668 Packages: for-current-hardware
2669 </pre></blockquote></p>
2670
2671 <p>The second part is in
2672 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2673 this:</p>
2674
2675 <p><blockquote><pre>
2676 #!/bin/sh
2677 #
2678 (
2679     isenkram-lookup
2680     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2681 ) | sort -u
2682 </pre></blockquote></p>
2683
2684 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2685 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2686 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2687 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2688 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2689 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2690
2691 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2692 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2693 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2694 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2695 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2696 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2697 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2698 the python-apt code (bug
2699 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2700 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2701 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2702 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2703 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2704 unstable today.</p>
2705
2706 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2707 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2708 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2709 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2710 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2711 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2712 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2713 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2714 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2715
2716 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2717 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2718 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2719 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2720 package.  See also
2721 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2722 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2723 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2724 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2725
2726       </div>
2727       <div class="tags">
2728
2729
2730         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>.
2731
2732
2733       </div>
2734     </div>
2735     <div class="padding"></div>
2736
2737     <div class="entry">
2738       <div class="title">
2739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
2740       </div>
2741       <div class="date">
2742         15th April 2014
2743       </div>
2744       <div class="body">
2745         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2746 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2747 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2748 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2749 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2750 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2751
2752 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2753 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2754 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2755 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2756 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2757 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2758 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2759
2760 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2761 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2762 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2763 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2764 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2765 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2766 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2767 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2768 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2769 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2770 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2771 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2772
2773 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2774 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2775 become root:</p>
2776
2777 <p><pre>
2778 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2779   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2780   u-boot-tools
2781 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2782   freedom-maker
2783 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2784 </pre></p>
2785
2786 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2787 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2788 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2789 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2790 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2791 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2792 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2793 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2794
2795 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2796 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2797 the preseed values:</p>
2798
2799 <p><pre>
2800 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2801 </pre></p>
2802
2803 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2804 it still work.</p>
2805
2806 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2807 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2808 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2809 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2810 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2811 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2812 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2813
2814 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2815 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2816 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2817 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2818 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2819 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2820
2821       </div>
2822       <div class="tags">
2823
2824
2825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2826
2827
2828       </div>
2829     </div>
2830     <div class="padding"></div>
2831
2832     <div class="entry">
2833       <div class="title">
2834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
2835       </div>
2836       <div class="date">
2837          9th April 2014
2838       </div>
2839       <div class="body">
2840         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2841 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2842 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2843 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2844 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2845 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2846 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2847 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2848 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2849 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2850 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2851 have looked at a system called
2852 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2853 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2854
2855 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2856 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2857 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2858 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2859 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2860 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2861 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2862 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2863 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2864 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2865 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2866 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2867 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2868
2869 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2870 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2871 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2872 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2873 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2874 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2875 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2876 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2877 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2878 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2879 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2880 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2881 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2882 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2883 account.</p>
2884
2885 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2886 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2887 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2888 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2889 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2890 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2891 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2892
2893 <p><blockquote><pre>
2894 [s3c]
2895 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2896 backend-login: API-login
2897 backend-password: API-password
2898 fs-passphrase: local-password
2899 </pre></blockquote></p>
2900
2901 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2902 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2903 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2904 details and password to create it:</p>
2905
2906 <p><blockquote><pre>
2907 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2908 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2909   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2910 Enter backend login:
2911 Enter backend password:
2912 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2913 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2914 Enter encryption password:
2915 Confirm encryption password:
2916 Generating random encryption key...
2917 Creating metadata tables...
2918 Dumping metadata...
2919 ..objects..
2920 ..blocks..
2921 ..inodes..
2922 ..inode_blocks..
2923 ..symlink_targets..
2924 ..names..
2925 ..contents..
2926 ..ext_attributes..
2927 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2928 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2929 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2930
2931 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2932
2933 <p><blockquote><pre>
2934 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2935   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2936 Using 4 upload threads.
2937 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2938 Reading metadata...
2939 ..objects..
2940 ..blocks..
2941 ..inodes..
2942 ..inode_blocks..
2943 ..symlink_targets..
2944 ..names..
2945 ..contents..
2946 ..ext_attributes..
2947 Mounting filesystem...
2948 # df -h /s3ql
2949 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2950 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2951 #
2952 </pre></blockquote></p>
2953
2954 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2955 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2956 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2957 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2958 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2959 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2960
2961 <p><blockquote><pre>
2962 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2963 #
2964 </pre></blockquote></p>
2965
2966 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2967 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2968 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2969 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2970 file system:</p>
2971
2972 <p><blockquote><pre>
2973 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2974 Using cached metadata.
2975 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2976 Checking DB integrity...
2977 Creating temporary extra indices...
2978 Checking lost+found...
2979 Checking cached objects...
2980 Checking names (refcounts)...
2981 Checking contents (names)...
2982 Checking contents (inodes)...
2983 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2984 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2985 Checking objects (backend)...
2986 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2987 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2988 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2989 Checking objects (sizes)...
2990 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2991 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2992 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2993 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2994 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2995 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2996 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2997 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2998 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2999 Checking directory reachability...
3000 Checking unix conventions...
3001 Checking referential integrity...
3002 Dropping temporary indices...
3003 Backing up old metadata...
3004 Dumping metadata...
3005 ..objects..
3006 ..blocks..
3007 ..inodes..
3008 ..inode_blocks..
3009 ..symlink_targets..
3010 ..names..
3011 ..contents..
3012 ..ext_attributes..
3013 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3014 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
3015 #
3016 </pre></blockquote></p>
3017
3018 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
3019 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
3020 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
3021 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
3022 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
3023 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
3024 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
3025 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
3026 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
3027 working set.</p>
3028
3029 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
3030 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
3031 busy:</p>
3032
3033 <p><blockquote><pre>
3034 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3035   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3036 Using 8 upload threads.
3037 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
3038 #
3039 </pre></blockquote></p>
3040
3041 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
3042 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
3043 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
3044 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
3045 s3qlctrl:
3046
3047 <p><blockquote><pre>
3048 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
3049 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
3050 #
3051 </pre></blockquote></p>
3052
3053 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
3054 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
3055 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
3056 a report:</p>
3057
3058 <p><blockquote><pre>
3059 # s3qlstat /s3ql
3060 Directory entries:    9141
3061 Inodes:               9143
3062 Data blocks:          8851
3063 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
3064 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
3065 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
3066 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
3067 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
3068 #
3069 </pre></blockquote></p>
3070
3071 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
3072 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
3073 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
3074 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
3075 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
3076 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
3077 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
3078 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
3079 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
3080 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
3081 best.</p>
3082
3083 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
3084 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
3085 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
3086 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
3087 poster is titled
3088 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
3089 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
3090 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
3091 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
3092 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
3093
3094 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
3095 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
3096 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
3097 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
3098 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
3099 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
3100 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
3101 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
3102
3103 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
3104 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
3105 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
3106 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
3107 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
3108 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
3109 only read from it.</p>
3110
3111 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3112 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3113 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3114
3115       </div>
3116       <div class="tags">
3117
3118
3119         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3120
3121
3122       </div>
3123     </div>
3124     <div class="padding"></div>
3125
3126     <div class="entry">
3127       <div class="title">
3128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
3129       </div>
3130       <div class="date">
3131          1st April 2014
3132       </div>
3133       <div class="body">
3134         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
3135 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
3136 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
3137 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
3138 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
3139 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
3140 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
3141 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
3142 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
3143 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
3144 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
3145 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
3146 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
3147
3148 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
3149 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
3150 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
3151 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
3152 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
3153 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
3154 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
3155 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
3156 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
3157 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
3158 Linux.</p>
3159
3160 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
3161 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
3162 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
3163 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
3164 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
3165 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
3166 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
3167 Windows before metro).</p>
3168
3169 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
3170 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
3171 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
3172 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
3173 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
3174 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
3175 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
3176 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
3177 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
3178 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
3179 old Windows binaries, check it out by
3180 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
3181 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
3182 image.</p>
3183
3184       </div>
3185       <div class="tags">
3186
3187
3188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
3189
3190
3191       </div>
3192     </div>
3193     <div class="padding"></div>
3194
3195     <div class="entry">
3196       <div class="title">
3197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
3198       </div>
3199       <div class="date">
3200         30th March 2014
3201       </div>
3202       <div class="body">
3203         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3204 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
3205 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
3206 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
3207 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
3208
3209 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3210
3211 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
3212 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
3213 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
3214 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
3215 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
3216
3217 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
3218 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
3219 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
3220
3221 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
3222 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
3223 hunger.</p>
3224
3225 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3226 project?</strong></p>
3227
3228 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
3229 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
3230 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
3231 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
3232 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
3233 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
3234 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
3235 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
3236 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
3237 running.  I just loved it.</p>
3238
3239 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3240 Edu?</strong></p>
3241
3242 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
3243 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
3244 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
3245 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
3246 be made of steel.</p>
3247
3248 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3249 Edu?</strong></p>
3250
3251 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
3252
3253 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
3254 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
3255 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
3256 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
3257 or dropped.</p>
3258
3259 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
3260 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
3261 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
3262 discourage many people too.</p>
3263
3264 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3265
3266 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
3267 Virtualbox.</p>
3268
3269
3270 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3271 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3272
3273 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
3274 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
3275 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
3276 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
3277 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
3278 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
3279 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
3280 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
3281 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
3282
3283       </div>
3284       <div class="tags">
3285
3286
3287         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>.
3288
3289
3290       </div>
3291     </div>
3292     <div class="padding"></div>
3293
3294     <div class="entry">
3295       <div class="title">
3296         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
3297       </div>
3298       <div class="date">
3299         25th March 2014
3300       </div>
3301       <div class="body">
3302         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
3303 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
3304 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
3305 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
3306 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
3307 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
3308 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
3309 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
3310 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
3311
3312 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
3313 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
3314 looked a given way.  Such
3315 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
3316 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
3317 called a
3318 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
3319 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
3320 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
3321 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
3322 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
3323 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
3324 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
3325 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
3326 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
3327 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
3328 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
3329 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
3330 There are several commercial services around providing such
3331 timestamping.  A quick search for
3332 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
3333 service</a>" pointed me to at least
3334 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
3335 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
3336 Vadis</a>,
3337 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
3338 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
3339 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
3340 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
3341
3342 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
3343 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
3344 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
3345 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
3346 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
3347 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
3348 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
3349 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
3350 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
3351 Greifswald.</p>
3352
3353 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
3354 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
3355 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
3356 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
3357 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
3358
3359 <p><blockquote><pre>
3360 #!/bin/sh
3361 set -e
3362 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
3363 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
3364 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
3365 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
3366 cafile=chain.txt
3367 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
3368     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
3369 fi
3370 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
3371     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
3372 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
3373 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
3374 base64 < "$resfile"
3375 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
3376 </pre></blockquote></p>
3377
3378 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
3379 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
3380 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
3381 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
3382 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
3383 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
3384 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
3385 changed.</p>
3386
3387 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
3388 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
3389 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
3390 to set up?</p>
3391
3392       </div>
3393       <div class="tags">
3394
3395
3396         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3397
3398
3399       </div>
3400     </div>
3401     <div class="padding"></div>
3402
3403     <div class="entry">
3404       <div class="title">
3405         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
3406       </div>
3407       <div class="date">
3408         21st March 2014
3409       </div>
3410       <div class="body">
3411         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
3412 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
3413 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
3414 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
3415 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
3416 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
3417 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
3418
3419 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
3420 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
3421 tried using
3422 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
3423 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
3424 and program
3425 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
3426 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
3427 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
3428 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
3429 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
3430 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
3431 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
3432 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
3433 this method.</p>
3434
3435 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
3436 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
3437 problem is
3438 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
3439 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
3440 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
3441 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
3442 DVD structures, as the python library
3443 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
3444 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
3445 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
3446 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
3447 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
3448 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
3449
3450 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
3451 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
3452
3453       </div>
3454       <div class="tags">
3455
3456
3457         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3458
3459
3460       </div>
3461     </div>
3462     <div class="padding"></div>
3463
3464     <div class="entry">
3465       <div class="title">
3466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
3467       </div>
3468       <div class="date">
3469         14th March 2014
3470       </div>
3471       <div class="body">
3472         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3473 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
3474 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
3475 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
3476 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
3477 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
3478 release (0.2).</p>
3479
3480 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
3481 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
3482 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
3483 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
3484 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
3485 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
3486 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
3487 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
3488 and build using
3489 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
3490 with a user with sudo access to become root:
3491
3492 <pre>
3493 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3494   freedom-maker
3495 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3496   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3497   u-boot-tools
3498 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3499 </pre>
3500
3501 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3502 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
3503 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
3504 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
3505 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
3506 kpartx call.</p>
3507
3508 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3509 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3510 the preseed values:</p>
3511
3512 <pre>
3513 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3514 </pre>
3515
3516 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
3517 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
3518 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
3519 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
3520 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
3521 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
3522
3523 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3524 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3525 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3526 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3527 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3528 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3529
3530       </div>
3531       <div class="tags">
3532
3533
3534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3535
3536
3537       </div>
3538     </div>
3539     <div class="padding"></div>
3540
3541     <div class="entry">
3542       <div class="title">
3543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3544       </div>
3545       <div class="date">
3546         12th March 2014
3547       </div>
3548       <div class="body">
3549         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
3550 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
3551 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
3552 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
3553 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
3554 document this better when one of the customers of
3555 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
3556 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
3557 get this working are the following:</p>
3558
3559 <p><ol>
3560
3561 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
3562 example host here.</li>
3563
3564 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
3565 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
3566
3567 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
3568 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
3569
3570 </ol></p>
3571
3572 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
3573 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
3574 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
3575 started).</p>
3576
3577 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
3578 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
3579
3580 <p><blockquote><pre>
3581 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
3582 Export list for nas-server:
3583 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
3584 root@tjener:~#
3585 </pre></blockquote></p>
3586
3587 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
3588 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
3589 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
3590 NFS access.</p>
3591
3592 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
3593 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
3594 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
3595
3596 <p><blockquote><pre>
3597 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3598 </pre></blockquote></p>
3599
3600 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
3601 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
3602 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
3603 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
3604
3605 <p><blockquote><pre>
3606 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3607 objectClass: automount
3608 cn: nas-server
3609 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3610
3611 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3612 objectClass: top
3613 objectClass: automountMap
3614 ou: auto.nas-server
3615
3616 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3617 objectClass: automount
3618 cn: /
3619 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
3620 </pre></blockquote></p>
3621
3622 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
3623 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
3624 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
3625
3626 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
3627 the storage server directly by just visiting the
3628 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
3629 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
3630
3631       </div>
3632       <div class="tags">
3633
3634
3635         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>.
3636
3637
3638       </div>
3639     </div>
3640     <div class="padding"></div>
3641
3642     <div class="entry">
3643       <div class="title">
3644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
3645       </div>
3646       <div class="date">
3647         22nd February 2014
3648       </div>
3649       <div class="body">
3650         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
3651 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
3652 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
3653 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
3654 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
3655 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
3656 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
3657 proper home since then.</p>
3658
3659 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
3660 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
3661 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
3662 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
3663 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
3664
3665 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
3666 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
3667 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
3668 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3669 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3670 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3671 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3672 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3673 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3674
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="tags">
3677
3678
3679         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>.
3680
3681
3682       </div>
3683     </div>
3684     <div class="padding"></div>
3685
3686     <div class="entry">
3687       <div class="title">
3688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
3689       </div>
3690       <div class="date">
3691          3rd February 2014
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="body">
3694         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
3695 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
3696 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
3697 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
3698 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
3699 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
3700 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
3701 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
3702 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
3703
3704 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
3705 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
3706 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
3707 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
3708 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
3709 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
3710
3711 <p><blockquote><pre>
3712 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
3713 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
3714 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
3715 dhclient /dev/eth0
3716 </pre></blockquote></p>
3717
3718 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
3719 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
3720 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
3721
3722 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
3723 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
3724 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
3725 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
3726 side.</p>
3727
3728 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
3729 stuff:</p>
3730
3731 <p><blockquote><pre>
3732 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3733 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
3734 EOF
3735 apt-get update
3736 apt-get dist-upgrade
3737 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
3738     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
3739 update-alternatives --config runsystem
3740 </pre></blockquote></p>
3741
3742 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
3743 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
3744 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
3745 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
3746 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
3747 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
3748 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
3749 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
3750 ssh instead.
3751
3752 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
3753 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
3754 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
3755 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
3756 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
3757 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
3758
3759 <p><blockquote><pre>
3760 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3761 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
3762 EOF
3763 </pre></blockquote></p>
3764
3765 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
3766 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
3767 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
3768 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
3769
3770 <p><blockquote><pre>
3771 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
3772 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
3773 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
3774 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
3775 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3776 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3777 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3778 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3779 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3780 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3781 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3782 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3783 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3784 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3785 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3786 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3787 #
3788 </pre></blockquote></p>
3789
3790 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3791 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3792 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3793 command line stuff.<p>
3794
3795       </div>
3796       <div class="tags">
3797
3798
3799         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>.
3800
3801
3802       </div>
3803     </div>
3804     <div class="padding"></div>
3805
3806     <div class="entry">
3807       <div class="title">
3808         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
3809       </div>
3810       <div class="date">
3811         29th January 2014
3812       </div>
3813       <div class="body">
3814         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
3815 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
3816 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
3817 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
3818 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
3819 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
3820 investigated in
3821 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
3822 from December 2013, in the article
3823 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
3824 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
3825 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
3826 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
3827 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
3828 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
3829 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
3830 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
3831
3832 <p><blockquote>
3833 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
3834 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
3835 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
3836 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
3837 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
3838 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
3839 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
3840 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
3841 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
3842 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
3843 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
3844 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
3845
3846 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
3847 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
3848 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
3849 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
3850 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
3851 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
3852 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
3853 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
3854 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
3855 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
3856 </blockquote><p>
3857
3858 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
3859 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
3860 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
3861 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
3862 summarized like this:</p>
3863
3864 <p><blockquote>
3865 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
3866 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
3867 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
3868 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
3869 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
3870 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
3871 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
3872 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
3873 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
3874 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
3875 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
3876 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
3877 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
3878 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
3879 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
3880 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
3881 </blockquote></p>
3882
3883 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
3884 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
3885 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
3886 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
3887
3888 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3889 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3890 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3891
3892       </div>
3893       <div class="tags">
3894
3895
3896         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
3897
3898
3899       </div>
3900     </div>
3901     <div class="padding"></div>
3902
3903     <div class="entry">
3904       <div class="title">
3905         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3906       </div>
3907       <div class="date">
3908         14th January 2014
3909       </div>
3910       <div class="body">
3911         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3912 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3913 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3914 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3915 the source.  The company behind it provide
3916 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3917 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3918 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3919 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3920 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3921 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3922 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3923 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3924 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3925 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3926 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3927 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3928 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3929 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3930 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3931 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3932 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3933 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3934 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3935
3936 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3937
3938 <ul>
3939
3940   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3941   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3942   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3943
3944 </ul>
3945
3946 <p>You can
3947 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3948 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3949 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3950 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3951 include a test suite check.</p>
3952
3953       </div>
3954       <div class="tags">
3955
3956
3957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3958
3959
3960       </div>
3961     </div>
3962     <div class="padding"></div>
3963
3964     <div class="entry">
3965       <div class="title">
3966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
3967       </div>
3968       <div class="date">
3969         25th December 2013
3970       </div>
3971       <div class="body">
3972         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3973 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
3974 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
3975 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
3976 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
3977 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
3978 George</a>.</p>
3979
3980 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
3981
3982 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3983
3984 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
3985 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
3986 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
3987 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
3988 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
3989 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
3990
3991 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
3992 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
3993 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
3994 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
3995 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
3996 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
3997 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
3998 to help building another school's informational education concept from
3999 scratch.</p>
4000
4001 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
4002 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
4003 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
4004
4005 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
4006 and cycling.</p>
4007
4008 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4009 project?</strong></p>
4010
4011 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
4012 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
4013 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
4014 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
4015 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
4016 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
4017
4018 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
4019 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
4020 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
4021 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
4022 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
4023 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
4024 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
4025 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
4026 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
4027
4028 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
4029 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
4030 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
4031 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
4032
4033 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4034 Edu?</strong></p>
4035
4036 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
4037 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
4038 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
4039 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
4040 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
4041 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
4042 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
4043 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
4044 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
4045 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
4046 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
4047 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
4048 that it rocks!</p>
4049
4050 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
4051 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
4052 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
4053 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
4054 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
4055 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
4056 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
4057
4058 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4059 Edu?</strong></p>
4060
4061 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
4062 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
4063 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
4064 can list a few points about that:</p>
4065
4066 <ul>
4067
4068  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
4069  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
4070  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
4071
4072 </ul>
4073
4074 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
4075
4076 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4077
4078 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
4079 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
4080 year.</p>
4081
4082 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
4083 run text tools. I use
4084 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
4085 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
4086 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
4087 based full-featured student management software with the two),
4088 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
4089 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
4090 coloured world called the WWW, I use
4091 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
4092 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
4093 e-mail.</p>
4094
4095 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
4096 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
4097 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
4098 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
4099 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
4100 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
4101 Facebook now ;).</p>
4102
4103 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4104 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4105
4106 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
4107 side is what I have experienced.</p>
4108
4109 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
4110 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
4111 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
4112 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
4113 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
4114 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
4115 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
4116 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
4117 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
4118 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
4119 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
4120 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
4121 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
4122 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
4123 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
4124 plain criminal.</p>
4125
4126 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
4127 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
4128 founded an association named
4129 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
4130 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
4131 area of free and open source software, for example the
4132 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
4133 Teckids and are the youth programme of
4134 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
4135 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
4136 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
4137 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
4138 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
4139 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
4140
4141 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
4142 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
4143 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
4144 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
4145 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
4146 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
4147 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
4148 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
4149 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
4150 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
4151 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
4152 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
4153
4154 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
4155 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
4156 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
4157 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
4158
4159 <!--
4160
4161 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
4162
4163 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
4164 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
4165
4166  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
4167    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
4168    of the decision makers above;
4169  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
4170    knowledge about free software
4171
4172 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
4173
4174 -->
4175
4176       </div>
4177       <div class="tags">
4178
4179
4180         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>.
4181
4182
4183       </div>
4184     </div>
4185     <div class="padding"></div>
4186
4187     <div class="entry">
4188       <div class="title">
4189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
4190       </div>
4191       <div class="date">
4192          6th December 2013
4193       </div>
4194       <div class="body">
4195         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
4196 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4197 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
4198 had a new school administrator show up on
4199 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
4200 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
4201 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
4202 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
4203 Germany a few years ago.</p>
4204
4205 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4206
4207 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
4208 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
4209 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
4210 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
4211
4212 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
4213 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
4214 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
4215 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
4216 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
4217 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
4218 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
4219 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
4220 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
4221
4222 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4223 project?</strong></p>
4224
4225 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
4226 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
4227 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
4228 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
4229
4230 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4231 Edu?</strong></p>
4232
4233 <ul>
4234   <li>Quick installation,</li>
4235   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
4236   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
4237   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
4238     single company,</li>
4239   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
4240     experience and problem solutions.</li>
4241 </ul>
4242
4243 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4244 Edu?</strong></p>
4245
4246 <ul>
4247   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
4248   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
4249   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
4250   working again reliably.
4251
4252   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
4253   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
4254   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
4255   as their base.
4256
4257   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
4258   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
4259   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
4260   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
4261   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
4262   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
4263
4264   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
4265   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
4266   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
4267   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
4268   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
4269   schemes.</li>
4270
4271   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
4272   compared to Debian.</li>
4273
4274 </ul>
4275
4276 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
4277 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
4278 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
4279 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
4280
4281 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4282
4283 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
4284 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
4285 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
4286 programming languages for teaching.</p>
4287
4288 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4289 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4290
4291 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
4292
4293 <ul>
4294
4295   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
4296     teaching and learning.</li>
4297
4298   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
4299     home, and at their working place without running into license or
4300     conversion problems.</li>
4301
4302   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
4303     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
4304     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
4305     science, not products.</li>
4306
4307   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
4308     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
4309
4310 </ul>
4311
4312       </div>
4313       <div class="tags">
4314
4315
4316         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>.
4317
4318
4319       </div>
4320     </div>
4321     <div class="padding"></div>
4322
4323     <div class="entry">
4324       <div class="title">
4325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
4326       </div>
4327       <div class="date">
4328         30th November 2013
4329       </div>
4330       <div class="body">
4331         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
4332 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
4333 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
4334 experiment with interesting network technology, the
4335 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
4336 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
4337 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
4338 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
4339 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
4340 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
4341 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
4342 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
4343 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
4344 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
4345 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
4346 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
4347 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
4348 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
4349 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
4350 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
4351
4352       </div>
4353       <div class="tags">
4354
4355
4356         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4357
4358
4359       </div>
4360     </div>
4361     <div class="padding"></div>
4362
4363     <div class="entry">
4364       <div class="title">
4365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
4366       </div>
4367       <div class="date">
4368         24th November 2013
4369       </div>
4370       <div class="body">
4371         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
4372 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
4373 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
4374 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
4375 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
4376 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
4377 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
4378 is working on.  I checked the
4379 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
4380 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
4381 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
4382 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
4383 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
4384 These are the release notes:</p>
4385
4386 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
4387
4388 <ul>
4389
4390   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
4391    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
4392    up.</li>
4393
4394   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
4395
4396   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
4397    Matthias Klose.</li>
4398
4399   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
4400    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
4401
4402   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
4403    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
4404    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
4405
4406 </ul>
4407
4408 <p>You can
4409 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4410 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4411 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4412 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4413 include a testsuite check.</p>
4414
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="tags">
4417
4418
4419         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4420
4421
4422       </div>
4423     </div>
4424     <div class="padding"></div>
4425
4426     <div class="entry">
4427       <div class="title">
4428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
4429       </div>
4430       <div class="date">
4431         21st November 2013
4432       </div>
4433       <div class="body">
4434         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
4435 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
4436 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
4437 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
4438 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
4439 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
4440 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
4441 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
4442 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
4443 TED talk
4444 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
4445 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
4446 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
4447
4448 <blockquote>
4449
4450 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
4451 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
4452 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
4453 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
4454 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
4455 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
4456 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
4457 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
4458 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
4459 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
4460 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
4461
4462 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
4463 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
4464 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
4465
4466 </blockquote>
4467
4468 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
4469 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
4470 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
4471 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
4472 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
4473 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
4474 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
4475 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
4476 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
4477
4478       </div>
4479       <div class="tags">
4480
4481
4482         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4483
4484
4485       </div>
4486     </div>
4487     <div class="padding"></div>
4488
4489     <div class="entry">
4490       <div class="title">
4491         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
4492       </div>
4493       <div class="date">
4494         13th November 2013
4495       </div>
4496       <div class="body">
4497         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
4498 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
4499 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
4500 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
4501 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
4502 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
4503 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
4504 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
4505 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
4506 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
4507 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
4508 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
4509 right away. :)</p>
4510
4511       </div>
4512       <div class="tags">
4513
4514
4515         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4516
4517
4518       </div>
4519     </div>
4520     <div class="padding"></div>
4521
4522     <div class="entry">
4523       <div class="title">
4524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
4525       </div>
4526       <div class="date">
4527         10th November 2013
4528       </div>
4529       <div class="body">
4530         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
4531 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
4532 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
4533 MR3040 as a mesh node using
4534 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
4535
4536 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
4537 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
4538 and downloaded
4539 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
4540 recommended firmware image</a>
4541 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
4542 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
4543 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
4544 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
4545 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
4546
4547 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
4548 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
4549 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
4550 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
4551 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
4552 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
4553 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
4554 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
4555 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
4556 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
4557 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
4558 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
4559 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
4560
4561 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
4562 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
4563 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
4564 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
4565 them:</p>
4566
4567 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
4568
4569 <pre>
4570
4571 config interface 'loopback'
4572         option ifname 'lo'
4573         option proto 'static'
4574         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
4575         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
4576
4577 config globals 'globals'
4578         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
4579
4580 config interface 'lan'
4581         option ifname 'eth0'
4582         option type 'bridge'
4583         option proto 'dhcp'
4584         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
4585         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
4586         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
4587         option ip6assign '60'
4588
4589 config interface 'mesh'
4590         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4591         option mtu '1528'
4592         option proto 'batadv'
4593         option mesh 'bat0'
4594 </pre>
4595
4596 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
4597 <pre>
4598
4599 config wifi-device 'radio0'
4600         option type 'mac80211'
4601         option channel '11'
4602         option hwmode '11ng'
4603         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
4604         option htmode 'HT20'
4605         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
4606         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
4607         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
4608         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
4609         option disabled '0'
4610
4611 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
4612         option device 'radio0'
4613         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4614         option network 'mesh'
4615         option encryption 'none'
4616         option mode 'adhoc'
4617         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
4618         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
4619 </pre>
4620 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
4621 <pre>
4622
4623 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
4624         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
4625         option 'aggregated_ogms'
4626         option 'ap_isolation'
4627         option 'bonding'
4628         option 'fragmentation'
4629         option 'gw_bandwidth'
4630         option 'gw_mode'
4631         option 'gw_sel_class'
4632         option 'log_level'
4633         option 'orig_interval'
4634         option 'vis_mode'
4635         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
4636         option 'distributed_arp_table'
4637         option 'network_coding'
4638         option 'hop_penalty'
4639
4640 # yet another batX instance
4641 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
4642 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
4643 </pre>
4644
4645 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
4646 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
4647 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
4648
4649       </div>
4650       <div class="tags">
4651
4652
4653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4654
4655
4656       </div>
4657     </div>
4658     <div class="padding"></div>
4659
4660     <div class="entry">
4661       <div class="title">
4662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
4663       </div>
4664       <div class="date">
4665          2nd November 2013
4666       </div>
4667       <div class="body">
4668         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4669 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4670 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4671 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4672 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4673
4674 <p><pre>
4675 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4676 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4677 # Provides:          rsyslog
4678 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4679 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4680 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4681 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4682 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4683 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4684 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4685 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4686 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4687 ### END INIT INFO
4688 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4689 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4690 </pre></p>
4691
4692 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4693 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
4694 info/comments.</p>
4695
4696 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
4697 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
4698
4699 <p><pre>
4700 #!/bin/sh
4701
4702 # Define LSB log_* functions.
4703 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
4704 # and status_of_proc is working.
4705 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
4706
4707 #
4708 # Function that starts the daemon/service
4709
4710 #
4711 do_start()
4712 {
4713         # Return
4714         #   0 if daemon has been started
4715         #   1 if daemon was already running
4716         #   2 if daemon could not be started
4717         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
4718                 || return 1
4719         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
4720                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
4721                 || return 2
4722         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
4723         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
4724         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
4725 }
4726
4727 #
4728 # Function that stops the daemon/service
4729 #
4730 do_stop()
4731 {
4732         # Return
4733         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
4734         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
4735         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
4736         #   other if a failure occurred
4737         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4738         RETVAL="$?"
4739         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
4740         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
4741         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
4742         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
4743         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
4744         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
4745         # sleep for some time.
4746         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
4747         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
4748         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
4749         rm -f $PIDFILE
4750         return "$RETVAL"
4751 }
4752
4753 #
4754 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
4755 #
4756 do_reload() {
4757         #
4758         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
4759         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
4760         # then implement that here.
4761         #
4762         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4763         return 0
4764 }
4765
4766 SCRIPTNAME=$1
4767 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
4768 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
4769 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
4770     script="$1"
4771     shift
4772     . $script
4773 else
4774     exit 0
4775 fi
4776
4777 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4778 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4779
4780 # Exit if the package is not installed
4781 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4782
4783 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4784 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4785
4786 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4787 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4788
4789 case "$1" in
4790   start)
4791         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4792         do_start
4793         case "$?" in
4794                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4795                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4796         esac
4797         ;;
4798   stop)
4799         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4800         do_stop
4801         case "$?" in
4802                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4803                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4804         esac
4805         ;;
4806   status)
4807         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4808         ;;
4809   #reload|force-reload)
4810         #
4811         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4812         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4813         #
4814         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4815         #do_reload
4816         #log_end_msg $?
4817         #;;
4818   restart|force-reload)
4819         #
4820         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4821         # 'force-reload' alias
4822         #
4823         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4824         do_stop
4825         case "$?" in
4826           0|1)
4827                 do_start
4828                 case "$?" in
4829                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4830                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4831                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4832                 esac
4833                 ;;
4834           *)
4835                 # Failed to stop
4836                 log_end_msg 1
4837                 ;;
4838         esac
4839         ;;
4840   *)
4841         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4842         exit 3
4843         ;;
4844 esac
4845
4846 :
4847 </pre></p>
4848
4849 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4850 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4851 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4852 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4853
4854 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4855 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4856 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4857 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4858 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4859
4860       </div>
4861       <div class="tags">
4862
4863
4864         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>.
4865
4866
4867       </div>
4868     </div>
4869     <div class="padding"></div>
4870
4871     <div class="entry">
4872       <div class="title">
4873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
4874       </div>
4875       <div class="date">
4876          1st November 2013
4877       </div>
4878       <div class="body">
4879         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
4880 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
4881 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
4882 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
4883 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
4884 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
4885 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
4886 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
4887 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
4888 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
4889 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
4890 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
4891
4892 <p>The source is now available from
4893 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
4894
4895       </div>
4896       <div class="tags">
4897
4898
4899         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>.
4900
4901
4902       </div>
4903     </div>
4904     <div class="padding"></div>
4905
4906     <div class="entry">
4907       <div class="title">
4908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
4909       </div>
4910       <div class="date">
4911         27th October 2013
4912       </div>
4913       <div class="body">
4914         <p>The
4915 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
4916 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
4917 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
4918 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
4919 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
4920 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
4921 of a plan to simplify the build system for
4922 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
4923 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
4924 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
4925 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
4926 Raspberry Pi.</p>
4927
4928 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
4929 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
4930 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
4931 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
4932 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
4933 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
4934 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
4935 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
4936 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
4937 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
4938 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
4939 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
4940 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
4941 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
4942 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
4943 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
4944 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
4945 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
4946 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
4947 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
4948 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
4949 available from
4950 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
4951 upstream project page</a>.</p>
4952
4953 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
4954 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
4955 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
4956 list:</p>
4957
4958 <p><pre>
4959 #!/bin/sh
4960 set -e # Exit on first error
4961 rootdir="$1"
4962 cd "$rootdir"
4963 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
4964 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
4965 EOF
4966 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
4967 # install a kernel somewhere too.
4968 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
4969     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4970 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4971 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
4972 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
4973 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
4974 </pre></p>
4975
4976 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
4977 to build the image:</p>
4978
4979 <pre>
4980 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
4981     --variant minbase \
4982     --arch armel \
4983     --distribution jessie \
4984     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
4985     --image test.img \
4986     --size 600M \
4987     --bootsize 64M \
4988     --boottype vfat \
4989     --log-level debug \
4990     --verbose \
4991     --no-kernel \
4992     --no-extlinux \
4993     --root-password raspberry \
4994     --hostname raspberrypi \
4995     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
4996     --customize `pwd`/customize \
4997     --package netbase \
4998     --package git-core \
4999     --package binutils \
5000     --package ca-certificates \
5001     --package wget \
5002     --package kmod
5003 </pre></p>
5004
5005 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
5006 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
5007 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
5008 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
5009 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
5010 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
5011 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
5012
5013 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
5014 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
5015 build dependency list.</p>
5016
5017 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
5018 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
5019 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
5020 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
5021
5022       </div>
5023       <div class="tags">
5024
5025
5026         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
5027
5028
5029       </div>
5030     </div>
5031     <div class="padding"></div>
5032
5033     <div class="entry">
5034       <div class="title">
5035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
5036       </div>
5037       <div class="date">
5038         21st October 2013
5039       </div>
5040       <div class="body">
5041         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
5042 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
5043 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
5044 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
5045 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
5046 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
5047 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
5048 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
5049
5050 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
5051 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
5052 instead, I started playing with a
5053 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
5054 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
5055 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
5056 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
5057 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
5058 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
5059 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
5060 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
5061 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
5062 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
5063 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
5064 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
5065 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
5066 every client on the local network.</p>
5067
5068 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
5069 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
5070 and a script
5071 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
5072 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
5073 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
5074 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
5075 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
5076 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
5077 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
5078 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
5079 support.</p>
5080
5081 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
5082 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
5083
5084 <p><pre>
5085 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
5086     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
5087 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
5088 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
5089 %
5090 </pre></p>
5091
5092 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
5093 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
5094 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
5095 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
5096 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
5097 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
5098
5099 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
5100 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
5101 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
5102
5103 <p><table>
5104
5105 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
5106 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
5107 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
5108 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
5109 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
5110 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
5111
5112 </table></p>
5113
5114 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
5115 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
5116 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
5117 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
5118 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
5119 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
5120 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
5121
5122       </div>
5123       <div class="tags">
5124
5125
5126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5127
5128
5129       </div>
5130     </div>
5131     <div class="padding"></div>
5132
5133     <div class="entry">
5134       <div class="title">
5135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
5136       </div>
5137       <div class="date">
5138         19th October 2013
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="body">
5141         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
5142 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
5143 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
5144 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
5145 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
5146 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
5147 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
5148 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
5149
5150       </div>
5151       <div class="tags">
5152
5153
5154         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>.
5155
5156
5157       </div>
5158     </div>
5159     <div class="padding"></div>
5160
5161     <div class="entry">
5162       <div class="title">
5163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
5164       </div>
5165       <div class="date">
5166         15th October 2013
5167       </div>
5168       <div class="body">
5169         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
5170 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
5171 these. :)</p>
5172
5173 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
5174 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
5175 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
5176 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
5177 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
5178 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
5179 hope you will to. :)</p>
5180
5181 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
5182 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
5183 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
5184 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
5185 donated.  Are you next?</p>
5186
5187 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
5188 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
5189 statement under the heading
5190 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
5191 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
5192 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
5193 too.</p>
5194
5195       </div>
5196       <div class="tags">
5197
5198
5199         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5200
5201
5202       </div>
5203     </div>
5204     <div class="padding"></div>
5205
5206     <div class="entry">
5207       <div class="title">
5208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
5209       </div>
5210       <div class="date">
5211         11th October 2013
5212       </div>
5213       <div class="body">
5214         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
5215 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
5216 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
5217 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
5218 successful examples like
5219 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
5220 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
5221 (see
5222 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
5223 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
5224 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
5225 can be seen from their
5226 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
5227 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
5228 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
5229 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
5230 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
5231
5232 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
5233 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
5234 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
5235 my recent involvement in
5236 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
5237 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
5238 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
5239 when possible, given that most communication between people are
5240 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
5241 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
5242 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
5243 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
5244 important over the years.</p>
5245
5246 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
5247 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
5248 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
5249 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
5250 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
5251 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
5252 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
5253 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
5254 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
5255 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
5256 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
5257 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
5258 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
5259 speakers about this talk (from
5260 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
5261
5262 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
5263
5264 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
5265 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
5266 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
5267 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
5268 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
5269 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
5270 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
5271 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
5272 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
5273 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
5274 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
5275 that project (from
5276 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
5277
5278 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
5279
5280 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
5281 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
5282 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
5283 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
5284 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
5285 based community mesh networks.</p>
5286
5287 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
5288 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
5289 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
5290 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
5291 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
5292 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
5293 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
5294 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
5295 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
5296
5297 <p><table>
5298 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
5299 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
5300 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
5301 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
5302 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
5303 </table></p>
5304
5305 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
5306 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
5307 VillageTelco about
5308 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
5309 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
5310 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
5311 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
5312 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
5313 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
5314
5315 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
5316 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
5317 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
5318 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
5319
5320 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
5321 us on IRC, either channel
5322 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
5323 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
5324 irc.freenode.net.</p>
5325
5326 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
5327 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
5328 and Innovation called
5329 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
5330 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
5331 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
5332 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
5333 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
5334 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
5335 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
5336 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
5337
5338 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
5339 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
5340 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
5341 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
5342 mesh system.</p>
5343
5344       </div>
5345       <div class="tags">
5346
5347
5348         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5349
5350
5351       </div>
5352     </div>
5353     <div class="padding"></div>
5354
5355     <div class="entry">
5356       <div class="title">
5357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
5358       </div>
5359       <div class="date">
5360          8th October 2013
5361       </div>
5362       <div class="body">
5363         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
5364 Salvador had published a
5365 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
5366 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
5367 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
5368 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
5369 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
5370 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
5371 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
5372 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
5373 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
5374 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
5375 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
5376 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
5377 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
5378 computers without hard drives by installing one central
5379 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
5380
5381 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
5382
5383 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5384
5385 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
5386 me know. :)</p>
5387
5388       </div>
5389       <div class="tags">
5390
5391
5392         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>.
5393
5394
5395       </div>
5396     </div>
5397     <div class="padding"></div>
5398
5399     <div class="entry">
5400       <div class="title">
5401         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
5402       </div>
5403       <div class="date">
5404         29th September 2013
5405       </div>
5406       <div class="body">
5407         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
5408 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
5409 complete announcement text can be found at
5410 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
5411 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
5412
5413 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
5414 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
5415 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
5416 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
5417
5418       </div>
5419       <div class="tags">
5420
5421
5422         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>.
5423
5424
5425       </div>
5426     </div>
5427     <div class="padding"></div>
5428
5429     <div class="entry">
5430       <div class="title">
5431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
5432       </div>
5433       <div class="date">
5434         27th September 2013
5435       </div>
5436       <div class="body">
5437         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
5438 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
5439 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
5440 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
5441
5442 <ul>
5443
5444 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
5445 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
5446
5447 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
5448 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5449
5450 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
5451 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
5452 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
5453 (Youtube)</li>
5454
5455 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
5456 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
5457
5458 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
5459 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5460
5461 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
5462 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
5463 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
5464
5465 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
5466 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
5467 (Youtube)</li>
5468
5469 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
5470 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
5471
5472 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
5473 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
5474
5475 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
5476 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
5477 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
5478
5479 </ul>
5480
5481 <p>A larger list is available from
5482 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
5483 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
5484
5485 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
5486 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
5487 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
5488 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
5489 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
5490 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
5491 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
5492 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
5493 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
5494 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5495 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5496
5497       </div>
5498       <div class="tags">
5499
5500
5501         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5502
5503
5504       </div>
5505     </div>
5506     <div class="padding"></div>
5507
5508     <div class="entry">
5509       <div class="title">
5510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
5511       </div>
5512       <div class="date">
5513         16th September 2013
5514       </div>
5515       <div class="body">
5516         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5517 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
5518
5519 <blockquote>
5520 <p>Hi,</p>
5521
5522 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
5523 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5524 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
5525
5526 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
5527 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
5528 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
5529 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
5530
5531 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
5532 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
5533
5534 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
5535 compared to beta1:</p>
5536
5537 <ul>
5538
5539 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
5540 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
5541 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
5542 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
5543 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
5544 main server.</li>
5545 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
5546 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
5547 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
5548 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
5549 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
5550
5551 </ul>
5552
5553 <p>Where to get it:</p>
5554
5555 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5556
5557 <ul>
5558 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5559 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5560 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
5561 </ul>
5562
5563 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
5564
5565 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
5566 <ul>
5567 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5568 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5569 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
5570 </ul>
5571
5572 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
5573
5574 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
5575 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
5576 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
5577 as the other isos.</p>
5578
5579 <p>How to report bugs</p>
5580
5581 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
5582 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5583
5584
5585 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
5586
5587 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5588 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5589 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
5590 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5591 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5592 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5593 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5594 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
5595 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5596 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5597 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5598 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
5599 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5600
5601 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5602 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5603 Squeeze release.</p>
5604
5605 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
5606
5607 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5608 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5609 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5610 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5611 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
5612 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
5613 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
5614 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
5615 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
5616 directory.</p>
5617
5618
5619 <p>cheers,
5620 <br>        Holger</p>
5621 </blockquote>
5622
5623       </div>
5624       <div class="tags">
5625
5626
5627         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>.
5628
5629
5630       </div>
5631     </div>
5632     <div class="padding"></div>
5633
5634     <div class="entry">
5635       <div class="title">
5636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
5637       </div>
5638       <div class="date">
5639         10th September 2013
5640       </div>
5641       <div class="body">
5642         <p>I was introduced to the
5643 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5644 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5645 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5646 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5647 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5648 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5649 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5650 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5651
5652 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5653 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5654 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5655 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5656 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5657
5658 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5659 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5660 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5661 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5662 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5663 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5664 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5665 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5666 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5667 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5668 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5669 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5670 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5671 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5672 missing in Debian).</p>
5673
5674 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5675 scripts
5676 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5677 and a administrative web interface
5678 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5679 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5681 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5682 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5683 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5684 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5685 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5686 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5687 this is really working yet, see
5688 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5689 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5690 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5691 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5692 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5693 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5694 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5695
5696 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5697 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5698 at.</p>
5699
5700 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5701
5702 <ol>
5703
5704 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5705 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5706 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5707 to the Debian installer:<p>
5708 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5709
5710 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5711 install on.</li>
5712
5713 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5714 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5715
5716 </ol>
5717
5718 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5719
5720 <ol>
5721
5722 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5723 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5724 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5725 <pre>
5726 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5727 </pre></li>
5728 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5729 <pre>
5730 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5731    apt-key add -
5732 apt-get update
5733 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5734 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5735 </pre></li>
5736 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5737
5738 </ol>
5739
5740 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5741 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5742 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5743 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5744 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5745
5746 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5747 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5748 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5749 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5750
5751 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5752 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5753 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5754 irc.debian.org and the
5755 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5756 mailing list</a>.</p>
5757
5758 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5759 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5760 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5761 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5762 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5763 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5764
5765       </div>
5766       <div class="tags">
5767
5768
5769         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5770
5771
5772       </div>
5773     </div>
5774     <div class="padding"></div>
5775
5776     <div class="entry">
5777       <div class="title">
5778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5779       </div>
5780       <div class="date">
5781         22nd August 2013
5782       </div>
5783       <div class="body">
5784         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5785 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
5786 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
5787
5788 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
5789
5790 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5791 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5792
5793 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5794
5795 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5796 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5797 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5798 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5799 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5800 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5801 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5802 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
5803 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5804 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5805 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5806 desktop contains
5807 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5808 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5809 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5810 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5811
5812 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
5813 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
5814 release.</p>
5815
5816 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5817 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5818 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5819 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5820 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
5821 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
5822 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
5823 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
5824 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
5825 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
5826 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
5827
5828 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5829
5830 <ul>
5831
5832 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
5833     work also without a attached tty.</li>
5834 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
5835     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
5836     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
5837     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
5838     required).</li>
5839
5840 </ul>
5841
5842 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5843
5844 <ul>
5845
5846 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
5847 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
5848 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
5849 stick ISO image.</li>
5850 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
5851 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
5852 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
5853     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
5854     cope with this.</li>
5855 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
5856 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
5857     empty password hashes.</li>
5858 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
5859     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
5860     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
5861
5862 </ul>
5863
5864 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5865
5866 <ul>
5867
5868 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5869     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5870 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
5871     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
5872
5873 </ul>
5874
5875 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5876
5877 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5878
5879 <ul>
5880
5881 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
5882
5883 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
5884
5885 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
5886
5887 </ul>
5888
5889 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
5890 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
5891
5892 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5893
5894 <ul>
5895
5896 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
5897 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
5898 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
5899
5900 </ul>
5901
5902 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
5903 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
5904
5905
5906 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5907
5908 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5909
5910       </div>
5911       <div class="tags">
5912
5913
5914         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>.
5915
5916
5917       </div>
5918     </div>
5919     <div class="padding"></div>
5920
5921     <div class="entry">
5922       <div class="title">
5923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
5924       </div>
5925       <div class="date">
5926         18th August 2013
5927       </div>
5928       <div class="body">
5929         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5930 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5931 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5932 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5933 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5934 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5935 currently on the disk.</p>
5936
5937 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5938 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
5939 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5940 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5941 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5942 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5943 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5944 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5945 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5946 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5947 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5948 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5949 the broken disks.</p>
5950
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="tags">
5953
5954
5955         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>.
5956
5957
5958       </div>
5959     </div>
5960     <div class="padding"></div>
5961
5962     <div class="entry">
5963       <div class="title">
5964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
5965       </div>
5966       <div class="date">
5967          2nd August 2013
5968       </div>
5969       <div class="body">
5970         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
5971 have worked on a Norwegian
5972 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
5973 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
5974 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
5975 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
5976 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
5977 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
5978 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
5979 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
5980 progress of the translation:</p>
5981
5982 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
5983
5984 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
5985 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
5986 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
5987 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
5988 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
5989 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
5990 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
5991 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
5992 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
5993 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
5994 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
5995
5996 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
5997 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
5998 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
5999 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6000 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6001 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
6002 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
6003 project files currently available from
6004 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6005
6006 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6007 the updated
6008 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6009 and
6010 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6011 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6012 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6013 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6014
6015       </div>
6016       <div class="tags">
6017
6018
6019         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>.
6020
6021
6022       </div>
6023     </div>
6024     <div class="padding"></div>
6025
6026     <div class="entry">
6027       <div class="title">
6028         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6029       </div>
6030       <div class="date">
6031         27th July 2013
6032       </div>
6033       <div class="body">
6034         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6035 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6036
6037 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
6038 2013-07-27</strong></p>
6039
6040 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6041 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6042
6043 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6044
6045 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6046 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6047 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6048 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6049 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6050 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6051 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6052 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6053 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6054 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6055 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6056 desktop contains
6057 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6058 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6059 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6060 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6061
6062 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6063 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6064 Squeeze release.</p>
6065
6066 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6067 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6068 release.</p>
6069
6070 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6071
6072 <ul>
6073
6074 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
6075    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
6076 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
6077    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
6078    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
6079    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
6080    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
6081 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
6082 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
6083 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
6084    crash bugs.</li>
6085
6086 </ul>
6087
6088 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6089
6090 <ul>
6091
6092 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
6093    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
6094 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
6095    netinst CD.</li>
6096 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
6097    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
6098 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
6099    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
6100    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
6101 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
6102    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
6103    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
6104 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
6105    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
6106    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
6107 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
6108    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
6109 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
6110
6111 </ul>
6112
6113 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6114
6115 <ul>
6116
6117 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
6118 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6119     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6120 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
6121
6122 </ul>
6123
6124 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6125
6126 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6127
6128 <ul>
6129
6130 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
6131
6132 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
6133
6134 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
6135
6136 </ul>
6137
6138 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
6139 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
6140
6141 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6142
6143 <ul>
6144
6145 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
6146 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
6147 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
6148
6149 </ul>
6150
6151 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
6152 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
6153
6154
6155 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6156
6157 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6158
6159       </div>
6160       <div class="tags">
6161
6162
6163         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>.
6164
6165
6166       </div>
6167     </div>
6168     <div class="padding"></div>
6169
6170     <div class="entry">
6171       <div class="title">
6172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
6173       </div>
6174       <div class="date">
6175         17th July 2013
6176       </div>
6177       <div class="body">
6178         <p>Today I switched to
6179 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
6180 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
6181 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
6182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
6183 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
6184 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
6185 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
6186 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
6187 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
6188 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
6189 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
6190 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
6191 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
6192 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
6193 station from now on.</p>
6194
6195 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
6196 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
6197 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
6198 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
6199 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
6200 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
6201 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
6202 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
6203 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
6204 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
6205 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
6206 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
6207
6208 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
6209 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
6210 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
6211 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
6212 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
6213 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
6214 parameters are tuned:</p>
6215
6216 <ul>
6217
6218 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
6219     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
6220
6221 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
6222     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
6223     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
6224
6225 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
6226     systems.</li>
6227
6228 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
6229     /etc/fstab.</li>
6230
6231 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
6232
6233 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
6234     cron.daily).</li>
6235
6236 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
6237     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
6238
6239 </ul>
6240
6241 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
6242 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
6243 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
6244 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
6245 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
6246 from getting the data on the disk (see
6247 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
6248 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
6249 right thing to do.</p>
6250
6251 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
6252 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
6253 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
6254
6255 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
6256 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
6257 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
6258 instead of during my work.</p>
6259
6260 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
6261 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
6262
6263 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
6264 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
6265 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
6266
6267 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
6268 there.</p>
6269
6270 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
6271 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
6272 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
6273 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
6274 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
6275 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
6276 back.</p>
6277
6278       </div>
6279       <div class="tags">
6280
6281
6282         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>.
6283
6284
6285       </div>
6286     </div>
6287     <div class="padding"></div>
6288
6289     <div class="entry">
6290       <div class="title">
6291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
6292       </div>
6293       <div class="date">
6294         10th July 2013
6295       </div>
6296       <div class="body">
6297         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
6298 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
6299 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
6300 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
6301 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
6302 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
6303 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
6304 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
6305
6306 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
6307 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
6308 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
6309 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
6310 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
6311 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
6312 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
6313 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
6314 lock up when I download a new
6315 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
6316 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
6317 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
6318
6319 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6320 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
6321 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6322 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
6323 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6324 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6325
6326 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6327 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
6328 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6329 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
6330 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6331 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6332
6333 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
6334 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
6335 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
6336 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
6337 exist).</p>
6338
6339       </div>
6340       <div class="tags">
6341
6342
6343         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>.
6344
6345
6346       </div>
6347     </div>
6348     <div class="padding"></div>
6349
6350     <div class="entry">
6351       <div class="title">
6352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
6353       </div>
6354       <div class="date">
6355          9th July 2013
6356       </div>
6357       <div class="body">
6358         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
6359 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
6360 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6361 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
6362 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6363 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
6364 Bitraf</a>.</p>
6365
6366 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
6367 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
6368 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
6369 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
6370 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
6371
6372       </div>
6373       <div class="tags">
6374
6375
6376         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>.
6377
6378
6379       </div>
6380     </div>
6381     <div class="padding"></div>
6382
6383     <div class="entry">
6384       <div class="title">
6385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
6386       </div>
6387       <div class="date">
6388          5th July 2013
6389       </div>
6390       <div class="body">
6391         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
6392 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
6393 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
6394 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
6395 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
6396 ended up picking a
6397 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
6398 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
6399 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
6400 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
6401 on that below.</p>
6402
6403 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6404 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6405 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6406 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6407 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6408 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
6409 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
6410 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
6411 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
6412
6413 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
6414 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
6415 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
6416 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
6417 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
6418 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
6419 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
6420
6421 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
6422 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
6423
6424 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
6425 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
6426 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
6427 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
6428 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
6429 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
6430 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
6431 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
6432 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
6433 kernel developers as
6434 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
6435 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
6436 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
6437 Lenovo forums, both for
6438 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
6439 2012-11-10</a> and for
6440 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
6441 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
6442 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
6443 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
6444 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
6445 There is even a
6446 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
6447 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
6448 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
6449
6450 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
6451 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
6452 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
6453 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
6454 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
6455 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
6456 fixed. :)</p>
6457
6458       </div>
6459       <div class="tags">
6460
6461
6462         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>.
6463
6464
6465       </div>
6466     </div>
6467     <div class="padding"></div>
6468
6469     <div class="entry">
6470       <div class="title">
6471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
6472       </div>
6473       <div class="date">
6474          4th July 2013
6475       </div>
6476       <div class="body">
6477         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
6478 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
6479 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
6480 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
6481 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
6482 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
6483 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
6484 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
6485 with an expencive door stop.</p>
6486
6487 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6488 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6489 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6490 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6491 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6492 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
6493 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
6494
6495 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
6496 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
6497 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
6498 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
6499 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
6500 new laptop now. :)</p>
6501
6502 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
6503
6504       </div>
6505       <div class="tags">
6506
6507
6508         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>.
6509
6510
6511       </div>
6512     </div>
6513     <div class="padding"></div>
6514
6515     <div class="entry">
6516       <div class="title">
6517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6518       </div>
6519       <div class="date">
6520          3rd July 2013
6521       </div>
6522       <div class="body">
6523         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6524 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6525
6526 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
6527 2013-07-03</strong></p>
6528
6529 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6530 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6531
6532 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6533
6534 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6535 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6536 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6537 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6538 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6539 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6540 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6541 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6542 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6543 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6544 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6545 desktop contains
6546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6547 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6548 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6549 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6550
6551 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6552 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6553 Squeeze release.</p>
6554
6555 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6556 <ul>
6557   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
6558   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
6559     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
6560     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
6561   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
6562     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
6563     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
6564   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
6565     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
6566     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
6567     too.</li>
6568   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
6569     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
6570 </ul>
6571 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6572 <ul>
6573   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
6574   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
6575   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
6576     up for some language options.</li>
6577   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
6578   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
6579   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
6580     d-i is doing it.</li>
6581   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
6582     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
6583   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
6584     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
6585     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
6586   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
6587     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
6588   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
6589   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
6590     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
6591   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
6592     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
6593 </ul>
6594 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6595 <ul>
6596   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6597     available yet (698840).</li>
6598   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
6599 </ul>
6600 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6601
6602 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6603 <ul>
6604   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6605   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6606   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
6607 </ul>
6608
6609 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
6610 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
6611
6612 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6613 <ul>
6614   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6615   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6616   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
6617 </ul>
6618
6619 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
6620 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
6621
6622 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6623
6624 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6625
6626       </div>
6627       <div class="tags">
6628
6629
6630         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>.
6631
6632
6633       </div>
6634     </div>
6635     <div class="padding"></div>
6636
6637     <div class="entry">
6638       <div class="title">
6639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
6640       </div>
6641       <div class="date">
6642         25th June 2013
6643       </div>
6644       <div class="body">
6645         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6646 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6647 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6648 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
6649 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6650 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
6651 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
6652 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6653 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6654 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6655 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
6656
6657 <p><pre>
6658 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6659 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6660 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6661 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6662 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6663 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6664 firmware-ipw2x00
6665 firmware-ipw2x00
6666 Preconfiguring packages ...
6667 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6668 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6669 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6670 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
6671 #
6672 </pre></p>
6673
6674 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6675 printed instead:</p>
6676
6677 <p><pre>
6678 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6679 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
6680 #
6681 </pre></p>
6682
6683 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6684 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
6685
6686 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
6687 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
6688 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
6689 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
6690 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
6691 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
6692 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
6693 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
6694 machine.</p>
6695
6696 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
6697 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
6698 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
6699 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
6700 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
6701 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
6702
6703       </div>
6704       <div class="tags">
6705
6706
6707         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>.
6708
6709
6710       </div>
6711     </div>
6712     <div class="padding"></div>
6713
6714     <div class="entry">
6715       <div class="title">
6716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="date">
6719         22nd June 2013
6720       </div>
6721       <div class="body">
6722         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6723 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
6724 which check that services are running, working, and return the
6725 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
6726 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
6727 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
6728 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
6729 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
6730 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
6731
6732 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
6733 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
6734 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
6735 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
6736 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
6737 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
6738 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
6739 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
6740 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
6741 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
6742 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
6743 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
6744 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
6745 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
6746
6747 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
6748 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
6749 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
6750 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
6751 the problem.</p>
6752
6753 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
6754 please join us on
6755 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6756 irc.debian.org</a> and the
6757 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
6758 list.</p>
6759
6760       </div>
6761       <div class="tags">
6762
6763
6764         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>.
6765
6766
6767       </div>
6768     </div>
6769     <div class="padding"></div>
6770
6771     <div class="entry">
6772       <div class="title">
6773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
6774       </div>
6775       <div class="date">
6776         17th June 2013
6777       </div>
6778       <div class="body">
6779         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6780 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
6781 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
6782 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
6783 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
6784 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
6785 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
6786 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
6787
6788 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6789
6790 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
6791 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
6792 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
6793 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
6794 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
6795 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
6796 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
6797 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
6798 field.</p>
6799
6800 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
6801 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
6802 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
6803 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
6804 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
6805 the only one we have in our country.</p>
6806
6807 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6808 project?</strong></p>
6809
6810 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
6811 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
6812 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
6813 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
6814 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
6815 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
6816 ways to contribute.</p>
6817
6818 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
6819 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
6820 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
6821 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
6822 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
6823 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
6824 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
6825 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
6826 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
6827 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
6828
6829 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6830 Edu?</strong></p>
6831
6832 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
6833 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
6834 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
6835 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
6836 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
6837 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
6838 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
6839 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
6840
6841 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
6842 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
6843 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
6844 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
6845 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
6846 project.</p>
6847
6848 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6849 Edu?</strong></p>
6850
6851 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
6852 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
6853 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
6854 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
6855 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
6856 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
6857 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
6858 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
6859 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
6860
6861 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
6862 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
6863 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
6864 on.</p>
6865
6866 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6867
6868 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
6869 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
6870 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
6871 Enlightenment project a lot!),
6872 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
6873 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
6874 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
6875 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
6876 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
6877
6878 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6879 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6880
6881 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
6882 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
6883 that:</p>
6884
6885 <ul>
6886
6887 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
6888
6889 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
6890     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
6891     of teenagers more?</li>
6892
6893 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
6894     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
6895     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
6896     them!)</li>
6897
6898 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
6899     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
6900     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
6901
6902 </ul>
6903
6904 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
6905 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
6906 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
6907 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
6908 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
6909
6910       </div>
6911       <div class="tags">
6912
6913
6914         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>.
6915
6916
6917       </div>
6918     </div>
6919     <div class="padding"></div>
6920
6921     <div class="entry">
6922       <div class="title">
6923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
6924       </div>
6925       <div class="date">
6926         12th June 2013
6927       </div>
6928       <div class="body">
6929         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
6930 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6931 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
6932 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
6933 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
6934 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
6935
6936 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6937
6938 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
6939 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
6940 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
6941
6942 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
6943 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
6944 each other.</p>
6945
6946 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6947 project?</strong></p>
6948
6949 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
6950 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
6951 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
6952 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
6953 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
6954 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
6955 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
6956 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
6957 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
6958 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
6959 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
6960 we'll get there one day.</p>
6961
6962 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6963 Edu?</strong></p>
6964
6965 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
6966 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
6967 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
6968 very high quality work.</p>
6969
6970 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
6971 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
6972 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
6973 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
6974 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
6975
6976 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6977 Edu?</strong></p>
6978
6979 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
6980 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
6981 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
6982
6983 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
6984 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
6985 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
6986 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
6987 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
6988 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
6989 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
6990 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
6991 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
6992 currently.</p>
6993
6994 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
6995 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
6996 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
6997 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
6998 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
6999 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
7000 autonomous.</p>
7001
7002 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7003
7004 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
7005 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
7006 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
7007 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
7008 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
7009
7010 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
7011 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
7012 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
7013 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
7014 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
7015 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
7016 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
7017 X.</p>
7018
7019 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
7020 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
7021 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
7022 it :p)
7023
7024 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7025 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7026
7027 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
7028 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
7029 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
7030 that.</p>
7031
7032 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
7033 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
7034 advantage of that.</p>
7035
7036 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
7037 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
7038 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
7039 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
7040 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
7041 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
7042 best solution for them.</p>
7043
7044 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
7045 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
7046 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
7047
7048       </div>
7049       <div class="tags">
7050
7051
7052         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>.
7053
7054
7055       </div>
7056     </div>
7057     <div class="padding"></div>
7058
7059     <div class="entry">
7060       <div class="title">
7061         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
7062       </div>
7063       <div class="date">
7064         11th June 2013
7065       </div>
7066       <div class="body">
7067         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7068 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7069 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7070 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7071 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7072 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7073 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7074 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7075 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7076 i915 driver used by the
7077 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7078 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7079
7080 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7081 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7082 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7083 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7084 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7085
7086 <pre>
7087 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7088 update-initramfs -u -k all
7089 </pre>
7090
7091 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7092 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7093 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7094 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7095 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7096 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7097 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7098 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7099 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7100 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7101 number.</p>
7102
7103 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7104 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7105
7106 <p><pre>
7107 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7108     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7109     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7110  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7111  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7112     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7113  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7114     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7115  Latency: 0
7116  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7117  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7118  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7119  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7120  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7121  Capabilities: <access denied>
7122  Kernel driver in use: i915
7123 </pre></p>
7124
7125 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7126
7127 <p><pre>
7128 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7129        ...
7130         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7131         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7132        ...
7133 }
7134 </pre></p>
7135
7136 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7137 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7138 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7139 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7140 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7141 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7142 yet shown up in
7143 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7144 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7145 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7146 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7147 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7148 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7149
7150 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7151 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7152 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7153 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7154 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7155 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7156 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7157 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7158 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7159 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7160 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7161 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7162
7163 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7164 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7165 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7166 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7167 backlight.</p>
7168
7169       </div>
7170       <div class="tags">
7171
7172
7173         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>.
7174
7175
7176       </div>
7177     </div>
7178     <div class="padding"></div>
7179
7180     <div class="entry">
7181       <div class="title">
7182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7183       </div>
7184       <div class="date">
7185         10th June 2013
7186       </div>
7187       <div class="body">
7188         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7189 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7190
7191 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
7192 2013-06-10</strong></p>
7193
7194 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7195 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7196
7197 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7198
7199 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7200 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7201 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7202 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7203 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7204 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7205 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7206 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7207 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7208 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7209 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7210 desktop contains
7211 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7212 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7213 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7214 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7215
7216 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7217 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7218 Squeeze release.</p>
7219
7220 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7221
7222 <ul>
7223
7224 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
7225 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
7226 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
7227 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
7228 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
7229
7230 </ul>
7231
7232 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7233
7234 <ul>
7235
7236 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
7237 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
7238 <li>New Romanian translation.
7239 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
7240 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
7241 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
7242 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
7243 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
7244 <li>More testsuite tests.
7245 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
7246 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
7247
7248 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
7249 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
7250
7251 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
7252 them up with GOsa².</li>
7253
7254 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
7255
7256 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
7257 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
7258 entered password). </li>
7259
7260 </ul>
7261
7262 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7263
7264 <ul>
7265
7266 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
7267
7268 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7269 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
7270 missing import feature).</li>
7271
7272 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
7273
7274 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
7275 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
7276 unfixed.</li>
7277
7278 </ul>
7279
7280 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7281
7282 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7283
7284 <ul>
7285
7286 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
7287
7288 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
7289
7290 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
7291
7292 </ul>
7293
7294 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
7295 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
7296
7297 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7298
7299 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7300
7301       </div>
7302       <div class="tags">
7303
7304
7305         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>.
7306
7307
7308       </div>
7309     </div>
7310     <div class="padding"></div>
7311
7312     <div class="entry">
7313       <div class="title">
7314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
7315       </div>
7316       <div class="date">
7317          5th June 2013
7318       </div>
7319       <div class="body">
7320         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
7321 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
7322 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
7323 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
7324 the project:
7325
7326 <ol>
7327
7328 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
7329   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
7330   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
7331   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
7332   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
7333
7334 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
7335   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
7336   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
7337   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
7338   #698840</a>.</li>
7339
7340 </ol>
7341
7342 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
7343 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7344 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
7345
7346       </div>
7347       <div class="tags">
7348
7349
7350         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>.
7351
7352
7353       </div>
7354     </div>
7355     <div class="padding"></div>
7356
7357     <div class="entry">
7358       <div class="title">
7359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
7360       </div>
7361       <div class="date">
7362          4th June 2013
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="body">
7365         <p>It has been a while since my last English
7366 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7367 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
7368 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
7369 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
7370 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
7371
7372 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7373
7374 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
7375 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
7376 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
7377 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
7378
7379 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
7380 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
7381 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
7382
7383 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7384 project?</strong></p>
7385
7386 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
7387 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
7388 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
7389 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
7390 manual.
7391
7392 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
7393 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
7394 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
7395 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
7396
7397 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
7398 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
7399 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
7400 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
7401 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
7402 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
7403 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
7404 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
7405 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
7406 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
7407
7408 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
7409 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
7410 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
7411 beautiful project.</p>
7412
7413 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7414 Edu?</strong></p>
7415
7416 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
7417 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
7418 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
7419
7420 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
7421 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
7422 of educational free software.</p>
7423
7424 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7425 Edu?</strong></p>
7426
7427 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
7428 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
7429 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
7430 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
7431 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
7432
7433 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
7434 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
7435 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
7436 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
7437 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
7438 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
7439 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
7440 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
7441
7442 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7443
7444 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
7445 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
7446 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
7447 also using the mathematical software
7448 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
7449 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
7450 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
7451
7452 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
7453 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
7454 statistics?</strong></p>
7455
7456 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
7457 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
7458 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
7459 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
7460
7461 <ul>
7462
7463 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
7464 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
7465 constructions in planar geometry
7466
7467 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
7468 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
7469 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
7470
7471 </ul>
7472
7473 <p>I like also
7474 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
7475 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
7476 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
7477
7478 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7479 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7480
7481 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
7482
7483 <ul>
7484
7485 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
7486
7487 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
7488     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
7489     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
7490
7491 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
7492
7493 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
7494     system.</li>
7495
7496 </ul>
7497
7498       </div>
7499       <div class="tags">
7500
7501
7502         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>.
7503
7504
7505       </div>
7506     </div>
7507     <div class="padding"></div>
7508
7509     <div class="entry">
7510       <div class="title">
7511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
7512       </div>
7513       <div class="date">
7514          1st June 2013
7515       </div>
7516       <div class="body">
7517         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7518 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
7519 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
7520 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
7521 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
7522 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
7523 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
7524 program.</p>
7525
7526 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
7527
7528 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
7529 <p>
7530 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
7531 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7532 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
7533 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
7534 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7535 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
7536 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
7537 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
7538 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
7539 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
7540 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
7541 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
7542 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
7543 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
7544 </p>
7545
7546 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
7547 <p>
7548 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
7549 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
7550 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
7551 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
7552 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
7553 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7554 </p>
7555
7556 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
7557 <p>
7558 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7559 </p>
7560
7561 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
7562 <p>
7563 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
7564 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
7565 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
7566 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
7567 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
7568 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
7569 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
7570 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
7571 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7572 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
7573 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
7574 </p>
7575
7576 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
7577 <p>
7578 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7579 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
7580 </p>
7581
7582 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
7583 <p>
7584 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
7585 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
7586 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7587 </p>
7588
7589 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
7590 <p>
7591 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7592 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
7593 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
7594 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
7595 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
7596 </p>
7597
7598 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
7599 <p>
7600 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7601 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
7602 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7603 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
7604 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
7605 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
7606 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
7607 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
7608 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
7609 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
7610 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
7611 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
7612 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
7613 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
7614 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7615 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
7616 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
7617 </p>
7618
7619 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
7620 <p>
7621 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7622 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
7623 </p>
7624
7625 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
7626 <p>
7627 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
7628 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
7629 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7630 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7631 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
7632 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
7633 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
7634 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
7635 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
7636 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7637 </p>
7638
7639 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
7640 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
7641 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
7642 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
7643 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
7644 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
7645 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
7646
7647       </div>
7648       <div class="tags">
7649
7650
7651         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>.
7652
7653
7654       </div>
7655     </div>
7656     <div class="padding"></div>
7657
7658     <div class="entry">
7659       <div class="title">
7660         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
7661       </div>
7662       <div class="date">
7663         27th May 2013
7664       </div>
7665       <div class="body">
7666         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7667 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
7668 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7669 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7670 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7671 and Windows 8.</p>
7672
7673 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7674 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7675 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7676 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7677 enough to tell.</p>
7678
7679 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7680 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7681 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7682 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7683 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7684 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7685 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7686 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7687 to follow.</p>
7688
7689 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7690 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7691 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7692 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7693 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7694 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7695 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7696 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7697
7698 <p>I've updated the
7699 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7700 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7701 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7702 machine.</p>
7703
7704 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7705 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7706
7707       </div>
7708       <div class="tags">
7709
7710
7711         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>.
7712
7713
7714       </div>
7715     </div>
7716     <div class="padding"></div>
7717
7718     <div class="entry">
7719       <div class="title">
7720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
7721       </div>
7722       <div class="date">
7723         25th May 2013
7724       </div>
7725       <div class="body">
7726         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7727 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7728 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7729 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7730 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7731 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7732
7733 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7734 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7735 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7736 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7737 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7738 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7739 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7740 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7741 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7742 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7743
7744 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7745 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7746 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7747 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7748 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7749 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7750
7751 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7752 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7753 on new Laptops?</p>
7754
7755       </div>
7756       <div class="tags">
7757
7758
7759         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>.
7760
7761
7762       </div>
7763     </div>
7764     <div class="padding"></div>
7765
7766     <div class="entry">
7767       <div class="title">
7768         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
7769       </div>
7770       <div class="date">
7771         17th May 2013
7772       </div>
7773       <div class="body">
7774         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7775 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7776 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7777 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7778 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7779 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7780 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7781 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7782 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7783 donate some money</a>.
7784
7785 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7786 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7787 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7788 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7789 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7790
7791 <p>The script,
7792 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
7793 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7794 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7795 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7796
7797 <ol>
7798
7799 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7800 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7801 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7802     our configuration.</li>
7803 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7804     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7805     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7806     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7807 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7808     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7809 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7810
7811 </ol>
7812
7813 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7814 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7815 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7816 the needed packages.</p>
7817
7818 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7819 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7820 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7821 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7822 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7823 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7824
7825 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7826 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7827 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7828
7829 <p><pre>
7830 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7831 DESKTOP="lxde"
7832 </pre></p>
7833
7834 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7835 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7836 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7837 boot.</p>
7838
7839       </div>
7840       <div class="tags">
7841
7842
7843         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>.
7844
7845
7846       </div>
7847     </div>
7848     <div class="padding"></div>
7849
7850     <div class="entry">
7851       <div class="title">
7852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7853       </div>
7854       <div class="date">
7855         14th May 2013
7856       </div>
7857       <div class="body">
7858         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7859 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
7860 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7861
7862 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
7863 2013-05-14</strong></p>
7864
7865 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7866 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
7867 codename "Wheezy".</p>
7868
7869 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7870
7871 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
7872 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7873 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
7874 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7875 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7876 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7877 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
7878 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
7879
7880 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7881 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7882 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7883
7884 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7885 <ul>
7886   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
7887     default.</li>
7888   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
7889   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
7890   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
7891     ibus-anthy.</li>
7892 </ul>
7893
7894 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7895 <ul>
7896
7897   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
7898     reliability improvements.</li>
7899   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
7900     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
7901   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
7902     problems.</li>
7903   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
7904     direct:// URL.</li>
7905   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
7906   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
7907   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
7908   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
7909     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
7910   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
7911     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
7912 </ul>
7913
7914 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7915 <ul>
7916
7917   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
7918     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
7919     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
7920   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
7921   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7922     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
7923   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
7924   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
7925   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
7926     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
7927   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
7928     password submission problem
7929     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
7930
7931 </ul>
7932
7933 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7934
7935 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7936 <ul>
7937
7938   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
7939   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
7940   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
7941
7942 </ul>
7943
7944 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
7945
7946 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
7947
7948 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7949
7950 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7951
7952       </div>
7953       <div class="tags">
7954
7955
7956         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>.
7957
7958
7959       </div>
7960     </div>
7961     <div class="padding"></div>
7962
7963     <div class="entry">
7964       <div class="title">
7965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
7966       </div>
7967       <div class="date">
7968         11th May 2013
7969       </div>
7970       <div class="body">
7971         <P>In January,
7972 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7973 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7974 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7975 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7976 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7977 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7978 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7979 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7980 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7981 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7982 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7983 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7984
7985 <p><table>
7986 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
7987 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7988 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
7989 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7990 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7991 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7992 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
7993 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
7994 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
7995 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7996 </table></p>
7997
7998 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7999 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
8000 available in experimental.</p>
8001
8002 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
8003 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
8004 for LEGO designers.</p>
8005
8006       </div>
8007       <div class="tags">
8008
8009
8010         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>.
8011
8012
8013       </div>
8014     </div>
8015     <div class="padding"></div>
8016
8017     <div class="entry">
8018       <div class="title">
8019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
8020       </div>
8021       <div class="date">
8022          5th May 2013
8023       </div>
8024       <div class="body">
8025         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
8026 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
8027 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
8028 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
8029 soon.</p>
8030
8031 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
8032 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
8033 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
8034 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
8035 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
8036 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
8037 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
8038 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
8039 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
8040 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
8041 Edu.</a>
8042
8043 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
8044 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
8045 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
8046 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
8047 follow.<p>
8048
8049       </div>
8050       <div class="tags">
8051
8052
8053         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>.
8054
8055
8056       </div>
8057     </div>
8058     <div class="padding"></div>
8059
8060     <div class="entry">
8061       <div class="title">
8062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8063       </div>
8064       <div class="date">
8065         26th April 2013
8066       </div>
8067       <div class="body">
8068         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
8069 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
8070 announcement:</p>
8071
8072 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
8073 2013-04-26</strong></p>
8074
8075 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
8076 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8077
8078 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8079
8080 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8081 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8082 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8083 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
8084 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8085 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8086 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8087 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8088 installed via the network.</p>
8089
8090 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8091 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8092 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8093
8094 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8095
8096 <ul>
8097 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
8098   <ul>
8099      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
8100      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
8101          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
8102          manual.)</li>
8103      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
8104      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
8105      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
8106      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
8107      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
8108      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
8109      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
8110      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
8111      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
8112      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
8113      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
8114      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
8115          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
8116          manual</a> for more details.</li>
8117      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
8118          installation.</li>
8119      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
8120          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
8121   </ul></li>
8122 </ul>
8123
8124 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
8125 <ul>
8126 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
8127     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
8128     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
8129 </ul>
8130
8131 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
8132 <ul>
8133 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
8134     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
8135     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
8136 </ul>
8137
8138 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8139 <ul>
8140 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
8141     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
8142     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
8143 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
8144     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
8145     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
8146 </ul>
8147
8148 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
8149 <ul>
8150 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
8151     yet.</li>
8152 </ul>
8153
8154 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
8155
8156 <ul>
8157 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
8158     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
8159     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
8160 </ul>
8161
8162 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8163
8164 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
8165 <ul>
8166 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
8167 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
8168 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
8169 </ul>
8170
8171 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
8172
8173 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
8174
8175 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8176
8177 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8178
8179       </div>
8180       <div class="tags">
8181
8182
8183         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>.
8184
8185
8186       </div>
8187     </div>
8188     <div class="padding"></div>
8189
8190     <div class="entry">
8191       <div class="title">
8192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
8193       </div>
8194       <div class="date">
8195         16th April 2013
8196       </div>
8197       <div class="body">
8198         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
8199 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
8200 Details about the gathering can be found
8201 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
8202 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
8203 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
8204 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
8205 weekend.</p>
8206
8207 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
8208 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
8209 Edu release.</p>
8210
8211 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
8212
8213       </div>
8214       <div class="tags">
8215
8216
8217         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>.
8218
8219
8220       </div>
8221     </div>
8222     <div class="padding"></div>
8223
8224     <div class="entry">
8225       <div class="title">
8226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
8227       </div>
8228       <div class="date">
8229          3rd April 2013
8230       </div>
8231       <div class="body">
8232         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
8233 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
8234 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
8235 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
8236
8237 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
8238 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
8239 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
8240 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
8241 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
8242 BTS. :)</p>
8243
8244       </div>
8245       <div class="tags">
8246
8247
8248         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>.
8249
8250
8251       </div>
8252     </div>
8253     <div class="padding"></div>
8254
8255     <div class="entry">
8256       <div class="title">
8257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
8258       </div>
8259       <div class="date">
8260         26th March 2013
8261       </div>
8262       <div class="body">
8263         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
8264 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
8265 font you use when printing.</p>
8266
8267 <p>Three years ago,
8268 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
8269 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
8270 changed their default front from
8271 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
8272 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
8273 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
8274 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
8275 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
8276 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
8277 prints.</p>
8278
8279 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
8280 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
8281 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
8282 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
8283 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
8284 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
8285 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
8286 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
8287 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
8288 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
8289 depend on the documents printed.</p>
8290
8291 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
8292 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
8293 and save some money in the process.</p>
8294
8295 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
8296 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
8297 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
8298 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
8299 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
8300 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
8301 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
8302 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
8303 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
8304
8305       </div>
8306       <div class="tags">
8307
8308
8309         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8310
8311
8312       </div>
8313     </div>
8314     <div class="padding"></div>
8315
8316     <div class="entry">
8317       <div class="title">
8318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
8319       </div>
8320       <div class="date">
8321         24th March 2013
8322       </div>
8323       <div class="body">
8324         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
8325 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
8326 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
8327 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
8328 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
8329 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
8330 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
8331 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
8332 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
8333 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
8334 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
8335 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
8336
8337 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
8338 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
8339 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
8340 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
8341 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
8342 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
8343 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
8344 all I had to do was to use the
8345 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
8346 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
8347 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
8348 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
8349 xsltproc/fop (aka
8350 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
8351 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
8352 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
8353 technical detail.</p>
8354
8355 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
8356 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
8357 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
8358 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
8359 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
8360 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
8361
8362 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
8363 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
8364 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
8365 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
8366 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
8367 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
8368 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
8369 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
8370 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
8371
8372 <p><blockquote><pre>
8373 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8374 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8375   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
8376     &lt;hr/&gt;
8377   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8378 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8379 </pre></blockquote></p>
8380
8381 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
8382
8383 <p><blockquote><pre>
8384 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8385 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8386   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
8387     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
8388       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
8389     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
8390   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8391 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8392 </pre></blockquote></p>
8393
8394 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
8395 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
8396 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
8397 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
8398 enough.</p>
8399
8400 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
8401 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
8402 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
8403 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
8404 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
8405 look like this:</p>
8406
8407 <p><blockquote><pre>
8408 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8409 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8410   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
8411     &lt;br/&gt;
8412   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8413 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8414 </pre></blockquote></p>
8415
8416 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
8417
8418 <p><blockquote><pre>
8419 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8420 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
8421   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
8422   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
8423     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
8424   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8425 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8426 </pre></blockquote></p>
8427
8428 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
8429 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
8430 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
8431 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
8432 page.</p>
8433
8434 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
8435 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
8436 github</a>
8437 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
8438 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
8439 days.</p>
8440
8441       </div>
8442       <div class="tags">
8443
8444
8445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8446
8447
8448       </div>
8449     </div>
8450     <div class="padding"></div>
8451
8452     <div class="entry">
8453       <div class="title">
8454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
8455       </div>
8456       <div class="date">
8457         17th March 2013
8458       </div>
8459       <div class="body">
8460         <p>Via
8461 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
8462 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
8463 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
8464 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
8465 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
8466 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
8467 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
8468
8469 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
8470 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
8471
8472 <blockquote>
8473 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
8474 </blockquote>
8475
8476 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
8477
8478 <blockquote>
8479 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
8480 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
8481 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
8482 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
8483 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
8484 </blockquote>
8485
8486 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
8487 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
8488 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
8489 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
8490
8491 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
8492 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
8493
8494 <blockquote>
8495 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
8496 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
8497 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
8498 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
8499 </blockquote>
8500
8501 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
8502 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
8503 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
8504 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
8505 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
8506
8507 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
8508 embedding:</p>
8509
8510 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
8511
8512       </div>
8513       <div class="tags">
8514
8515
8516         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>.
8517
8518
8519       </div>
8520     </div>
8521     <div class="padding"></div>
8522
8523     <div class="entry">
8524       <div class="title">
8525         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
8526       </div>
8527       <div class="date">
8528          8th March 2013
8529       </div>
8530       <div class="body">
8531         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
8532 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8533 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
8534 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
8535 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
8536 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
8537 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
8538
8539 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
8540
8541 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
8542 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
8543
8544 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
8545 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
8546 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
8547 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
8548 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
8549 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
8550
8551 <p>Images are available for download at
8552 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
8553
8554 <p>md5sums:
8555 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8556 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8557 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8558
8559 <p>sha1sums:
8560 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8561 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8562 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8563
8564 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
8565
8566 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
8567 2013-03-03:</p>
8568
8569 <ul>
8570   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
8571   <ul>
8572         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
8573         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
8574   </ul></li>
8575   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
8576   <ul>
8577         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
8578         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
8579   </ul></li>
8580   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
8581      <ul>
8582         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
8583         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
8584         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
8585                 Closes: #664596</li>
8586         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
8587                 Closes: #664976</li>
8588         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
8589            <ul>
8590                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
8591                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
8592            </ul></li>
8593         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
8594            <ul>
8595                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
8596                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
8597                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
8598                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
8599                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
8600            </ul></li>
8601         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
8602     </ul>
8603   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
8604     <ul>
8605         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
8606     </ul></li>
8607 </ul>
8608
8609 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
8610 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
8611 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
8612 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
8613
8614 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
8615 mailinglist
8616 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
8617 </p></blockquote>
8618
8619 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
8620
8621       </div>
8622       <div class="tags">
8623
8624
8625         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>.
8626
8627
8628       </div>
8629     </div>
8630     <div class="padding"></div>
8631
8632     <div class="entry">
8633       <div class="title">
8634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
8635       </div>
8636       <div class="date">
8637          3rd March 2013
8638       </div>
8639       <div class="body">
8640         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
8641 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
8642 support using
8643 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
8644 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
8645 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
8646 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
8647 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
8648 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
8649 using the GNU LGPL, and
8650 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
8651
8652 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
8653 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
8654 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
8655 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
8656 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
8657 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
8658
8659 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
8660 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
8661 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
8662 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
8663 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
8664 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
8665 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
8666 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
8667 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
8668 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
8669 signal distribution is handled using
8670 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
8671 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
8672 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
8673 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
8674 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
8675 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
8676 them up a bit more first.</p>
8677
8678 <p>The development is coordinated on the
8679 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
8680 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
8681 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
8682 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
8683 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
8684 development.</p>
8685
8686       </div>
8687       <div class="tags">
8688
8689
8690         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8691
8692
8693       </div>
8694     </div>
8695     <div class="padding"></div>
8696
8697     <div class="entry">
8698       <div class="title">
8699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
8700       </div>
8701       <div class="date">
8702         27th February 2013
8703       </div>
8704       <div class="body">
8705         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
8706 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
8707 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
8708 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
8709 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
8710 (where I am the chair of the board) and
8711 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
8712 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
8713 GNU», with this description:
8714
8715 <p><blockquote>
8716 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
8717 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
8718 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
8719 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
8720 </blockquote></p>
8721
8722 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
8723 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
8724 am really curious how many will show up.  See
8725 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
8726 page</a> for the location details.</p>
8727
8728       </div>
8729       <div class="tags">
8730
8731
8732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8733
8734
8735       </div>
8736     </div>
8737     <div class="padding"></div>
8738
8739     <div class="entry">
8740       <div class="title">
8741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
8742       </div>
8743       <div class="date">
8744         15th February 2013
8745       </div>
8746       <div class="body">
8747         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
8748 now a great source of free maps available from
8749 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
8750 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
8751 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
8752 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
8753 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
8754 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
8755 page for descriptions).</p>
8756
8757 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
8758 map you can just edit the
8759 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
8760 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
8761
8762       </div>
8763       <div class="tags">
8764
8765
8766         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>.
8767
8768
8769       </div>
8770     </div>
8771     <div class="padding"></div>
8772
8773     <div class="entry">
8774       <div class="title">
8775         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
8776       </div>
8777       <div class="date">
8778         12th February 2013
8779       </div>
8780       <div class="body">
8781         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
8782 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
8783 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
8784 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
8785 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
8786 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
8787 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
8788 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
8789 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
8790 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
8791 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
8792 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
8793 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
8794 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
8795 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
8796 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
8797
8798 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
8799 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
8800 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
8801 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
8802 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
8803 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
8804 fields:</p>
8805
8806 <p><pre>
8807 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8808 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8809 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
8810 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8811 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8812 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8813 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8814 </pre></p>
8815
8816 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
8817 answer regarding
8818 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
8819 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
8820 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
8821 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
8822
8823 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
8824
8825 <p><pre>
8826 BEGIN:VCARD
8827 VERSION:2.1
8828 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
8829 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
8830 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
8831 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
8832 REV:20130212T095000Z
8833 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8834 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8835 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8836 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8837 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8838 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8839 END:VCARD
8840 </pre></p>
8841
8842 <p>The resulting QR code created using
8843 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
8844 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
8845 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
8846 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
8847 system.</p>
8848
8849 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
8850
8851 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
8852 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
8853 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
8854 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
8855
8856 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
8857 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
8858
8859       </div>
8860       <div class="tags">
8861
8862
8863         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>.
8864
8865
8866       </div>
8867     </div>
8868     <div class="padding"></div>
8869
8870     <div class="entry">
8871       <div class="title">
8872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
8873       </div>
8874       <div class="date">
8875         10th February 2013
8876       </div>
8877       <div class="body">
8878         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
8879
8880 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
8881 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
8882 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
8883 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
8884 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
8885 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
8886 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
8887 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
8888 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
8889 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
8890 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
8891
8892 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
8893 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
8894 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
8895 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
8896 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
8897 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
8898 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
8899 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
8900 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
8901 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
8902 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
8903 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
8904 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
8905 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
8906 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
8907 ones own
8908 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
8909 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
8910 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
8911 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
8912 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
8913 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
8914 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
8915 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
8916 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
8917 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
8918 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
8919
8920 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
8921 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
8922 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
8923 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
8924 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
8925 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
8926
8927 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
8928 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
8929 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
8930
8931       </div>
8932       <div class="tags">
8933
8934
8935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8936
8937
8938       </div>
8939     </div>
8940     <div class="padding"></div>
8941
8942     <div class="entry">
8943       <div class="title">
8944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
8945       </div>
8946       <div class="date">
8947          2nd February 2013
8948       </div>
8949       <div class="body">
8950         <p>My
8951 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
8952 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
8953 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
8954 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
8955 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
8956 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
8957 version too.</p>
8958
8959 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
8960 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
8961 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
8962 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
8963 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
8964 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
8965 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
8966 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
8967
8968 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
8969 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
8970 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
8971 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
8972 it. :)</p>
8973
8974 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8975 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8976 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8977
8978       </div>
8979       <div class="tags">
8980
8981
8982         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>.
8983
8984
8985       </div>
8986     </div>
8987     <div class="padding"></div>
8988
8989     <div class="entry">
8990       <div class="title">
8991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8992       </div>
8993       <div class="date">
8994         22nd January 2013
8995       </div>
8996       <div class="body">
8997         <p>Yesterday, I
8998 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8999 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
9000 pluggable hardware devices, which I
9001 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
9002 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
9003 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
9004 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
9005 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
9006 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
9007 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
9008 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
9009 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
9010 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
9011
9012 <pre>
9013 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
9014 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
9015 </pre>
9016
9017 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
9018 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
9019 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
9020 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
9021
9022 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
9023 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
9024 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
9025 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
9026 word.</p>
9027
9028 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
9029 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
9030 process.</p>
9031
9032 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
9033 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
9034
9035       </div>
9036       <div class="tags">
9037
9038
9039         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>.
9040
9041
9042       </div>
9043     </div>
9044     <div class="padding"></div>
9045
9046     <div class="entry">
9047       <div class="title">
9048         <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>
9049       </div>
9050       <div class="date">
9051         21st January 2013
9052       </div>
9053       <div class="body">
9054         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
9055 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
9056 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
9057 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
9058 it, fetch the
9059 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
9060 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
9061 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
9062 autostart script.</p>
9063
9064 <p>The design is simple:</p>
9065
9066 <ul>
9067
9068 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
9069 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
9070
9071 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
9072 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
9073 initially did.</li>
9074
9075 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
9076 the APT database, a database
9077 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
9078 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
9079
9080 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
9081 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
9082 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
9083 package or packages.</li>
9084
9085 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
9086 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
9087
9088 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
9089 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
9090
9091 </ul>
9092
9093 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
9094 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
9095 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
9096 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
9097
9098 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
9099 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
9100 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
9101 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
9102 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
9103
9104 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
9105 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
9106 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
9107 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
9108 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
9109 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
9110 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
9111 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
9112
9113 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
9114 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
9115 '<tt>svn checkout
9116 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
9117 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
9118 devscripts package.</p>
9119
9120 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
9121 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
9122 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
9123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
9124 instructions</a> for details.</p>
9125
9126       </div>
9127       <div class="tags">
9128
9129
9130         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>.
9131
9132
9133       </div>
9134     </div>
9135     <div class="padding"></div>
9136
9137     <div class="entry">
9138       <div class="title">
9139         <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>
9140       </div>
9141       <div class="date">
9142         19th January 2013
9143       </div>
9144       <div class="body">
9145         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
9146 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
9147 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
9148 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
9149 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
9150 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
9151 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
9152 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
9153 not a durable solution.
9154
9155 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
9156 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
9157
9158 <ul>
9159
9160 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
9161   than A4).</li>
9162 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
9163 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
9164 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
9165 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
9166 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
9167 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
9168 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
9169 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
9170 size).</li>
9171 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
9172   X.org packages.</li>
9173 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
9174   the time).
9175
9176 </ul>
9177
9178 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
9179 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
9180 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
9181 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
9182 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
9183 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
9184 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
9185 still be useful.</p>
9186
9187 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
9188 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
9189 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
9190 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
9191 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
9192 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
9193
9194       </div>
9195       <div class="tags">
9196
9197
9198         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>.
9199
9200
9201       </div>
9202     </div>
9203     <div class="padding"></div>
9204
9205     <div class="entry">
9206       <div class="title">
9207         <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>
9208       </div>
9209       <div class="date">
9210         18th January 2013
9211       </div>
9212       <div class="body">
9213         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
9214 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
9215 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
9216 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
9217 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
9218 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
9219 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
9220
9221 <pre>
9222 #!/usr/bin/python
9223 import sys
9224 import apt
9225 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9226     cache = apt.Cache()
9227     cache.open(None)
9228     thepkgs = []
9229     for pkg in cache:
9230         version = pkg.candidate
9231         if version is None:
9232             version = pkg.installed
9233         if version is None:
9234             continue
9235         record = version.record
9236         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
9237             continue
9238         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
9239         for t in mime_types:
9240             t = t.rstrip().strip()
9241             if t == mimetype:
9242                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
9243     return thepkgs
9244 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
9245 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
9246     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
9247 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
9248 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9249     print "  %s" %pkg
9250 </pre>
9251
9252 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
9253
9254 <pre>
9255 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
9256 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
9257   gecko-mediaplayer
9258 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
9259 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
9260   browser-plugin-gnash
9261 %
9262 </pre>
9263
9264 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
9265 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
9266 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
9267 anyone working on adding it?</p>
9268
9269 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
9270 request for icweasel support for this feature is
9271 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
9272 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
9273 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
9274 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
9275
9276       </div>
9277       <div class="tags">
9278
9279
9280         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>.
9281
9282
9283       </div>
9284     </div>
9285     <div class="padding"></div>
9286
9287     <div class="entry">
9288       <div class="title">
9289         <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>
9290       </div>
9291       <div class="date">
9292         16th January 2013
9293       </div>
9294       <div class="body">
9295         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
9296 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
9297 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
9298 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
9299 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
9300 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
9301 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
9302 downloaded by the browser.</p>
9303
9304 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
9305 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
9306 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
9307 can be found on the
9308 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
9309 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
9310 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
9311 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
9312 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
9313
9314 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
9315
9316 <pre>
9317   count MIME type
9318   ----- -----------------------
9319      32 text/plain
9320      30 audio/mpeg
9321      29 image/png
9322      28 image/jpeg
9323      27 application/ogg
9324      26 audio/x-mp3
9325      25 image/tiff
9326      25 image/gif
9327      22 image/bmp
9328      22 audio/x-wav
9329      20 audio/x-flac
9330      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9331      18 video/x-ms-asf
9332      18 audio/x-musepack
9333      18 audio/x-mpeg
9334      18 application/x-ogg
9335      17 video/mpeg
9336      17 audio/x-scpls
9337      17 audio/ogg
9338      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9339 </pre>
9340
9341 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
9342
9343 <pre>
9344   count MIME type
9345   ----- -----------------------
9346      33 text/plain
9347      32 image/png
9348      32 image/jpeg
9349      29 audio/mpeg
9350      27 image/gif
9351      26 image/tiff
9352      26 application/ogg
9353      25 audio/x-mp3
9354      22 image/bmp
9355      21 audio/x-wav
9356      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9357      19 audio/x-mpeg
9358      18 video/mpeg
9359      18 audio/x-scpls
9360      18 audio/x-flac
9361      18 application/x-ogg
9362      17 video/x-ms-asf
9363      17 text/html
9364      17 audio/x-musepack
9365      16 image/x-xbitmap
9366 </pre>
9367
9368 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
9369
9370 <pre>
9371   count MIME type
9372   ----- -----------------------
9373      31 text/plain
9374      31 image/png
9375      31 image/jpeg
9376      29 audio/mpeg
9377      28 application/ogg
9378      27 image/gif
9379      26 image/tiff
9380      26 audio/x-mp3
9381      23 audio/x-wav
9382      22 image/bmp
9383      21 audio/x-flac
9384      20 audio/x-mpegurl
9385      19 audio/x-mpeg
9386      18 video/x-ms-asf
9387      18 video/mpeg
9388      18 audio/x-scpls
9389      18 application/x-ogg
9390      17 audio/x-musepack
9391      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9392      16 video/x-msvideo
9393 </pre>
9394
9395 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
9396 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
9397 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
9398 issues.</p>
9399
9400 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
9401 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
9402
9403       </div>
9404       <div class="tags">
9405
9406
9407         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>.
9408
9409
9410       </div>
9411     </div>
9412     <div class="padding"></div>
9413
9414     <div class="entry">
9415       <div class="title">
9416         <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>
9417       </div>
9418       <div class="date">
9419         15th January 2013
9420       </div>
9421       <div class="body">
9422         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
9423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
9424 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
9425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
9426 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
9427 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
9428 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
9429 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
9430 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
9431 packages.</p>
9432
9433 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
9434 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
9435 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
9436 modalias.</p>
9437
9438 <p><blockquote>
9439 Package: package-name
9440 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
9441 </blockquote></p>
9442
9443 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
9444 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
9445
9446 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
9447 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
9448
9449 <p><blockquote>
9450 Package: cheese
9451 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
9452 </blockquote></p>
9453
9454 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
9455 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
9456
9457 <p><blockquote>
9458 Package: pcmciautils
9459 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
9460 </blockquote></p>
9461
9462 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
9463 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
9464
9465 <p><blockquote>
9466 Package: colorhug-client
9467 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
9468 </blockquote></p>
9469
9470 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
9471 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
9472 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
9473
9474 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
9475 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
9476 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
9477 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
9478 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
9479 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
9480 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
9481 Raring.</p>
9482
9483 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
9484 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
9485 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
9486 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
9487 try the
9488 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
9489 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
9490 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
9491 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
9492
9493 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
9494 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
9495
9496 <p><blockquote>
9497 % ./hw-support-lookup
9498 <br>yubikey-personalization
9499 <br>%
9500 </blockquote></p>
9501
9502 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
9503 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
9504
9505 <p><blockquote>
9506 % ./hw-support-lookup
9507 <br>pcmciautils
9508 <br>%
9509 </blockquote></p>
9510
9511 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
9512 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
9513 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
9514
9515 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
9516 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
9517 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
9518 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
9519 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
9520 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
9521 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
9522 see if it work.</p>
9523
9524 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9525 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9526 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9527 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9528
9529       </div>
9530       <div class="tags">
9531
9532
9533         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>.
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/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
9543       </div>
9544       <div class="date">
9545         14th January 2013
9546       </div>
9547       <div class="body">
9548         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
9549 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
9550 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
9551 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
9552 in
9553 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9554 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
9555
9556 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
9557
9558 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
9559 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
9560 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
9561 &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;,
9562 &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
9563 &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;.
9564
9565 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
9566 this shell script:</p>
9567
9568 <pre>
9569 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
9570 </pre>
9571
9572 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
9573 using modinfo:</p>
9574
9575 <pre>
9576 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
9577 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
9578 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
9579 %
9580 </pre>
9581
9582 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
9583
9584 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
9585 Bridge memory controller:</p>
9586
9587 <p><blockquote>
9588 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
9589 </blockquote></p>
9590
9591 <p>This represent these values:</p>
9592
9593 <pre>
9594  v   00008086  (vendor)
9595  d   00002770  (device)
9596  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
9597  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
9598  bc  06        (bus class)
9599  sc  00        (bus subclass)
9600  i   00        (interface)
9601 </pre>
9602
9603 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
9604 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
9605 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
9606 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
9607
9608 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
9609 means.</p>
9610
9611 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
9612
9613 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
9614 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
9615
9616 <p><blockquote>
9617 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
9618 </blockquote></p>
9619
9620 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
9621
9622 <pre>
9623  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
9624  p    0001  (device product)
9625  d    0206  (bcddevice)
9626  dc     09  (device class)
9627  dsc    00  (device subclass)
9628  dp     00  (device protocol)
9629  ic     09  (interface class)
9630  isc    00  (interface subclass)
9631  ip     00  (interface protocol)
9632 </pre>
9633
9634 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
9635 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
9636 these alias entries show up:</p>
9637
9638 <p><blockquote>
9639 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
9640 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
9641 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
9642 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
9643 </blockquote></p>
9644
9645 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
9646 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
9647 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
9648
9649 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
9650
9651 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
9652 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
9653
9654 <p><blockquote>
9655 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9656 </blockquote></p>
9657
9658 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
9659
9660 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
9661
9662 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
9663 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
9664 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
9665
9666 <p><blockquote>
9667 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
9668 </blockquote></p>
9669
9670 <p>The values present are</p>
9671
9672 <pre>
9673  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
9674  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
9675  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
9676  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
9677  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
9678  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
9679  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
9680  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
9681  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
9682  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9683  ct   10             (chassis type)
9684  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
9685 </pre>
9686
9687 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
9688 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
9689
9690 <pre>
9691   3 Desktop
9692   4 Low Profile Desktop
9693   5 Pizza Box
9694   6 Mini Tower
9695   7 Tower
9696   8 Portable
9697   9 Laptop
9698  10 Notebook
9699  11 Hand Held
9700  12 Docking Station
9701  13 All In One
9702  14 Sub Notebook
9703  15 Space-saving
9704  16 Lunch Box
9705  17 Main Server Chassis
9706  18 Expansion Chassis
9707  19 Sub Chassis
9708  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
9709  21 Peripheral Chassis
9710  22 RAID Chassis
9711  23 Rack Mount Chassis
9712  24 Sealed-case PC
9713  25 Multi-system
9714  26 CompactPCI
9715  27 AdvancedTCA
9716  28 Blade
9717  29 Blade Enclosing
9718 </pre>
9719
9720 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
9721 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
9722 claim it is a desktop.</p>
9723
9724 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
9725
9726 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
9727 test machine:</p>
9728
9729 <p><blockquote>
9730 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
9731 </blockquote></p>
9732
9733 <p>The values present are</p>
9734
9735 <pre>
9736   ty  01  (type)
9737   pr  00  (prototype)
9738   id  00  (id)
9739   ex  00  (extra)
9740 </pre>
9741
9742 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
9743 the valid values are.</p>
9744
9745 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
9746
9747 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
9748 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
9749 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
9750 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
9751 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
9752 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
9753 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
9754
9755 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
9756
9757 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
9758 one can use the following shell script:</p>
9759
9760 <pre>
9761   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
9762     echo "$id" ; \
9763     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
9764   done
9765 </pre>
9766
9767 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
9768 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
9769
9770 <pre>
9771   acpi:ACPI0003:
9772     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
9773   acpi:device:
9774   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
9775   acpi:IBM0068:
9776     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9777     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9778     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9779     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9780   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9781     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9782     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9783     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9784   [...]
9785 </pre>
9786
9787 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9788 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9789 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9790 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9791
9792 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9793 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9794 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9795
9796       </div>
9797       <div class="tags">
9798
9799
9800         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>.
9801
9802
9803       </div>
9804     </div>
9805     <div class="padding"></div>
9806
9807     <div class="entry">
9808       <div class="title">
9809         <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>
9810       </div>
9811       <div class="date">
9812         10th January 2013
9813       </div>
9814       <div class="body">
9815         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9816 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9817 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9818 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9819 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9820 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9821 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9822 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9823 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9824 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9825 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9826 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9827 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9828 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9829 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9830 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9831 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9832 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9833
9834       </div>
9835       <div class="tags">
9836
9837
9838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9839
9840
9841       </div>
9842     </div>
9843     <div class="padding"></div>
9844
9845     <div class="entry">
9846       <div class="title">
9847         <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>
9848       </div>
9849       <div class="date">
9850          9th January 2013
9851       </div>
9852       <div class="body">
9853         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9854 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9855 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9856 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9857 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9858 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9859 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
9860 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
9861 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
9862 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
9863 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
9864
9865 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
9866 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
9867 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
9868 simple:
9869
9870 <ul>
9871
9872 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
9873   starting when a user log in.</li>
9874
9875 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
9876   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
9877
9878 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
9879   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
9880   packages.</li>
9881
9882 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
9883   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
9884
9885 </ul>
9886
9887 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
9888 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
9889 discover database to find packages and
9890 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
9891 packages.</p>
9892
9893 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
9894 draft package is now checked into
9895 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9896 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
9897 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
9898 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
9899 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
9900 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
9901 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
9902 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
9903 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
9904 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
9905 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
9906 because of the freeze).</p>
9907
9908 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
9909 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
9910 inserted):</p>
9911
9912 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
9913
9914 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
9915 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
9916 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
9917
9918 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
9919 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
9920 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
9921 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
9922 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
9923 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
9924 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
9925
9926 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
9927 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
9928 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
9929 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
9930 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
9931 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
9932 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
9933 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
9934 not be installed?</p>
9935
9936 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
9937 please send me an email. :)</p>
9938
9939       </div>
9940       <div class="tags">
9941
9942
9943         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>.
9944
9945
9946       </div>
9947     </div>
9948     <div class="padding"></div>
9949
9950     <div class="entry">
9951       <div class="title">
9952         <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>
9953       </div>
9954       <div class="date">
9955          2nd January 2013
9956       </div>
9957       <div class="body">
9958         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
9959 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
9960 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
9961 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
9962 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
9963 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
9964 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
9965 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
9966 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
9967 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
9968
9969 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
9970 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
9971 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
9972
9973       </div>
9974       <div class="tags">
9975
9976
9977         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>.
9978
9979
9980       </div>
9981     </div>
9982     <div class="padding"></div>
9983
9984     <div class="entry">
9985       <div class="title">
9986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9987       </div>
9988       <div class="date">
9989         28th December 2012
9990       </div>
9991       <div class="body">
9992         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
9993 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9994 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
9995 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
9996 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
9997 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
9998 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
9999 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
10000 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
10001 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
10002 followed by many others. :)</p>
10003
10004 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
10005 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
10006 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
10007 you want to donate to the project.</p>
10008
10009       </div>
10010       <div class="tags">
10011
10012
10013         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>.
10014
10015
10016       </div>
10017     </div>
10018     <div class="padding"></div>
10019
10020     <div class="entry">
10021       <div class="title">
10022         <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>
10023       </div>
10024       <div class="date">
10025         25th December 2012
10026       </div>
10027       <div class="body">
10028         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
10029 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
10030
10031 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
10032 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
10033 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
10034 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
10035 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
10036 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
10037 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
10038 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
10039 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
10040 name.</p>
10041
10042 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
10043 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
10044 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
10045
10046 <blockquote><pre>
10047 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
10048 cd bitcoin
10049 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
10050 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
10051 </pre></blockquote>
10052
10053 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
10054 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
10055 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
10056 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
10057 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
10058 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
10059 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
10060 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
10061 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
10062
10063 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10064 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10065 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10066
10067       </div>
10068       <div class="tags">
10069
10070
10071         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>.
10072
10073
10074       </div>
10075     </div>
10076     <div class="padding"></div>
10077
10078     <div class="entry">
10079       <div class="title">
10080         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
10081       </div>
10082       <div class="date">
10083         21st December 2012
10084       </div>
10085       <div class="body">
10086         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
10087 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
10088 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
10089 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
10090 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
10091 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
10092 is now maintained by a
10093 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
10094 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
10095 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
10096 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
10097 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
10098 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
10099 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
10100 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
10101 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
10102 Corallo in a
10103 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
10104 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
10105 Debian package.</p>
10106
10107 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
10108 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
10109 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
10110 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
10111 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
10112 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
10113 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
10114 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
10115 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
10116 new version to unstable.
10117
10118 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
10119 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
10120 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
10121 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
10122 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
10123 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
10124 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
10125 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
10126 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
10127 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
10128 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
10129 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
10130 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
10131 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
10132 have not tested them.</p>
10133
10134 <p>My
10135 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
10136 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
10137 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
10138 years ago, as can be
10139 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
10140 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
10141 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
10142 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
10143 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
10144 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
10145 the same address as last time,
10146 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10147
10148       </div>
10149       <div class="tags">
10150
10151
10152         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>.
10153
10154
10155       </div>
10156     </div>
10157     <div class="padding"></div>
10158
10159     <div class="entry">
10160       <div class="title">
10161         <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>
10162       </div>
10163       <div class="date">
10164         18th December 2012
10165       </div>
10166       <div class="body">
10167         <p>A few days ago I came across
10168 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
10169 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
10170 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
10171 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
10172 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
10173 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
10174 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
10175 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
10176 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
10177
10178 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
10179 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
10180 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
10181 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
10182
10183 <blockquote><pre>
10184 2004-05-27 Book Store
10185       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
10186       Liabilities:Visa
10187 </pre></blockquote>
10188
10189 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
10190 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
10191 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
10192 Spang</a>,
10193 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
10194 Keen</a>,
10195 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
10196 Cantino</a> and
10197 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
10198 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
10199 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
10200 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
10201 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
10202
10203 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
10204 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
10205 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
10206 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
10207 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
10208
10209 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
10210 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
10211 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
10212 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
10213 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
10214 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
10215 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
10216 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
10217 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
10218
10219       </div>
10220       <div class="tags">
10221
10222
10223         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>.
10224
10225
10226       </div>
10227     </div>
10228     <div class="padding"></div>
10229
10230     <div class="entry">
10231       <div class="title">
10232         <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>
10233       </div>
10234       <div class="date">
10235          6th December 2012
10236       </div>
10237       <div class="body">
10238         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
10239 Oslo</a>, we use the
10240 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
10241 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
10242 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
10243 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
10244 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
10245 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
10246 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
10247 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
10248 Python.</p>
10249
10250 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
10251 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
10252 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
10253 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
10254 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
10255 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
10256
10257 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
10258 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
10259 user currently logged in:</p>
10260
10261 <blockquote><pre>
10262 #!/usr/bin/env python
10263 import getpass
10264 import xmlrpclib
10265 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
10266 username = getpass.getuser()
10267 password = getpass.getpass()
10268 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
10269 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
10270 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
10271 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
10272 result = server.logout(sessionid)
10273 print result
10274 </pre></blockquote>
10275
10276 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
10277 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
10278
10279       </div>
10280       <div class="tags">
10281
10282
10283         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>.
10284
10285
10286       </div>
10287     </div>
10288     <div class="padding"></div>
10289
10290     <div class="entry">
10291       <div class="title">
10292         <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>
10293       </div>
10294       <div class="date">
10295         17th November 2012
10296       </div>
10297       <div class="body">
10298         <p>While working on a
10299 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
10300 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
10301 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
10302 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
10303 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
10304 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
10305
10306 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
10307 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
10308 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
10309 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
10310 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
10311 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
10312 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
10313 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
10314 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
10315 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
10316 arguments.</p>
10317
10318 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
10319 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
10320 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
10321 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
10322 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
10323 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
10324 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
10325 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
10326
10327 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
10328 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
10329 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
10330 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
10331 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
10332 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
10333 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
10334 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
10335 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
10336 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
10337 correct right holder.</p>
10338
10339 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
10340 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
10341 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
10342 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
10343 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
10344 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
10345 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
10346 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
10347 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
10348 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
10349 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
10350 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
10351 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
10352 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
10353
10354 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
10355 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
10356 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
10357
10358 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
10359 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
10360
10361       </div>
10362       <div class="tags">
10363
10364
10365         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>.
10366
10367
10368       </div>
10369     </div>
10370     <div class="padding"></div>
10371
10372     <div class="entry">
10373       <div class="title">
10374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
10375       </div>
10376       <div class="date">
10377         14th November 2012
10378       </div>
10379       <div class="body">
10380         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
10381 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10382 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
10383 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
10384 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
10385 the people behind the German
10386 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
10387 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
10388 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
10389
10390 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10391
10392 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
10393 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
10394 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
10395
10396 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
10397 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
10398 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
10399 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
10400 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
10401 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
10402
10403 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
10404 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
10405 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
10406 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
10407 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
10408 relationship management and the communication processes in the
10409 project.</p>
10410
10411 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
10412 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
10413 and a yoga teacher.</p>
10414
10415 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10416 project?</strong></p>
10417
10418 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
10419
10420 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
10421 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
10422 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
10423 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
10424 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
10425 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
10426 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
10427 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
10428 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
10429 parents.</p>
10430
10431 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
10432 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
10433 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
10434 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
10435 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
10436 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
10437 Germany.</p>
10438
10439 <p>For information about our school project you can read
10440 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
10441 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
10442
10443 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10444 Edu?</strong></p>
10445
10446 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
10447 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
10448
10449 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
10450 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
10451 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
10452 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
10453 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
10454 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
10455 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
10456 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
10457 teachers, parents...</p>
10458
10459 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10460 Edu?</strong></p>
10461
10462 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
10463 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10464
10465 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
10466 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
10467 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
10468 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
10469 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10470
10471 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
10472 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
10473 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
10474 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
10475 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
10476 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
10477 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10478
10479 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10480
10481 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
10482 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
10483 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
10484 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
10485
10486 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10487 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10488
10489 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
10490 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
10491 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
10492 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
10493 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
10494
10495 <ul>
10496
10497 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
10498 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
10499 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
10500
10501 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
10502 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
10503 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
10504 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
10505 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
10506 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
10507 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
10508
10509 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
10510 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
10511 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
10512 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
10513
10514 </ul>
10515
10516       </div>
10517       <div class="tags">
10518
10519
10520         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>.
10521
10522
10523       </div>
10524     </div>
10525     <div class="padding"></div>
10526
10527     <div class="entry">
10528       <div class="title">
10529         <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>
10530       </div>
10531       <div class="date">
10532          4th November 2012
10533       </div>
10534       <div class="body">
10535         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
10536 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
10537 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
10538 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
10539 see how a member of the bitcoin community
10540 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
10541 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
10542 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
10543 competition.  My thoughts go to the
10544 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
10545 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
10546 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
10547 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
10548 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
10549
10550 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
10551 that the community already seem to have
10552 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
10553 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
10554 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
10555 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
10556 wealth is available.</p>
10557
10558       </div>
10559       <div class="tags">
10560
10561
10562         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>.
10563
10564
10565       </div>
10566     </div>
10567     <div class="padding"></div>
10568
10569     <div class="entry">
10570       <div class="title">
10571         <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>
10572       </div>
10573       <div class="date">
10574         26th October 2012
10575       </div>
10576       <div class="body">
10577         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10578 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
10579 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
10580 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
10581 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
10582 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
10583 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
10584 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
10585 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
10586 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
10587 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
10588 it every time.</p>
10589
10590 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
10591 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
10592 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
10593 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
10594 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
10595 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
10596 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
10597 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
10598 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
10599 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
10600 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
10601 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
10602
10603 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
10604 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
10605 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
10606 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
10607 article: First the unplanned outage:
10608
10609 <blockquote><pre>
10610 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
10611 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
10612 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
10613 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
10614 Duration:    40 minutes
10615 Scope:       Exchange 2003
10616 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
10617              a cluster failover.
10618
10619 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
10620              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
10621 Technician:  [xxx]
10622 </pre></blockquote>
10623
10624 Next the planned outage:
10625
10626 <blockquote><pre>
10627 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
10628 Severity:    Major (Planned)
10629 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
10630 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
10631 Duration:    10 hours
10632 Scope:       H2 Transport
10633 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
10634              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
10635              4510s.
10636 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
10637              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
10638              connectivity.
10639 Technician:  [xxx]
10640 </pre></blockquote>
10641
10642 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
10643 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
10644 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
10645 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
10646 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
10647 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
10648 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
10649
10650 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
10651 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
10652 university too.  We do register
10653 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
10654 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
10655 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
10656 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
10657 for other sites to consider too?</p>
10658
10659       </div>
10660       <div class="tags">
10661
10662
10663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
10664
10665
10666       </div>
10667     </div>
10668     <div class="padding"></div>
10669
10670     <div class="entry">
10671       <div class="title">
10672         <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>
10673       </div>
10674       <div class="date">
10675         22nd October 2012
10676       </div>
10677       <div class="body">
10678         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
10679 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
10680 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
10681 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
10682 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
10683 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
10684 background information is available in Norwegian from
10685 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
10686 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
10687 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
10688 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
10689 willing to
10690 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
10691 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
10692 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
10693 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
10694 sounded like
10695 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
10696 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
10697 later.</p>
10698
10699 <p>And thought this action is
10700 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
10701 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
10702 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
10703 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
10704 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
10705 rights.</p>
10706
10707 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
10708 unacceptable terms.  For example
10709 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
10710 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
10711 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
10712 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
10713 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
10714
10715 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
10716 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
10717 restored the account of the user, as reported by
10718 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
10719 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
10720 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
10721 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
10722 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
10723 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
10724 reading two opinions from
10725 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
10726 Phipps</a> and
10727 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
10728 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
10729 details about the original story.</p>
10730
10731       </div>
10732       <div class="tags">
10733
10734
10735         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>.
10736
10737
10738       </div>
10739     </div>
10740     <div class="padding"></div>
10741
10742     <div class="entry">
10743       <div class="title">
10744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
10745       </div>
10746       <div class="date">
10747         18th October 2012
10748       </div>
10749       <div class="body">
10750         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
10751 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
10752 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
10753 across a marvellous drawing by
10754 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
10755 visualising some of what is going on.
10756
10757 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
10758 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
10759
10760 <blockquote>
10761 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
10762 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
10763 </blockquote>
10764
10765 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
10766 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
10767 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
10768 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
10769 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
10770 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
10771
10772       </div>
10773       <div class="tags">
10774
10775
10776         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>.
10777
10778
10779       </div>
10780     </div>
10781     <div class="padding"></div>
10782
10783     <div class="entry">
10784       <div class="title">
10785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
10786       </div>
10787       <div class="date">
10788         12th October 2012
10789       </div>
10790       <div class="body">
10791         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
10792 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
10793 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
10794 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
10795 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
10796 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
10797 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
10798 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
10799 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
10800 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
10801 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
10802 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
10803 matter".</p>
10804
10805 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
10806 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
10807 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
10808 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
10809 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
10810 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
10811 to argue its side.</p>
10812
10813 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
10814 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
10815 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
10816 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
10817
10818 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
10819 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
10820 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
10821
10822       </div>
10823       <div class="tags">
10824
10825
10826         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>.
10827
10828
10829       </div>
10830     </div>
10831     <div class="padding"></div>
10832
10833     <div class="entry">
10834       <div class="title">
10835         <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>
10836       </div>
10837       <div class="date">
10838          3rd October 2012
10839       </div>
10840       <div class="body">
10841         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
10842 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
10843 the computer science book collection available in his local
10844 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
10845 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
10846 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
10847 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
10848 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
10849 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
10850 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
10851 recently published books.</p>
10852
10853 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
10854 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
10855 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
10856 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
10857 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
10858 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
10859 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
10860 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
10861 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
10862 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
10863 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
10864 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
10865 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
10866 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
10867 for the library that evening.</p>
10868
10869 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
10870 going to know that for example
10871 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
10872 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
10873 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
10874 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
10875 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
10876 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
10877 book right away.</p>
10878
10879       </div>
10880       <div class="tags">
10881
10882
10883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10884
10885
10886       </div>
10887     </div>
10888     <div class="padding"></div>
10889
10890     <div class="entry">
10891       <div class="title">
10892         <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>
10893       </div>
10894       <div class="date">
10895         23rd September 2012
10896       </div>
10897       <div class="body">
10898         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
10899 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
10900 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10901 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
10902 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
10903 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
10904
10905 When I started, I
10906 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10907 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
10908 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
10909 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
10910 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
10911 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
10912 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
10913
10914 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10915
10916 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
10917 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
10918 the project files currently available from
10919 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10920
10921 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10922 the updated
10923 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10924 and
10925 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10926 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10927 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10928 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10929
10930       </div>
10931       <div class="tags">
10932
10933
10934         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>.
10935
10936
10937       </div>
10938     </div>
10939     <div class="padding"></div>
10940
10941     <div class="entry">
10942       <div class="title">
10943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
10944       </div>
10945       <div class="date">
10946         17th September 2012
10947       </div>
10948       <div class="body">
10949         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
10950 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10951 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
10952 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
10953 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
10954 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
10955 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
10956
10957 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10958
10959 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
10960 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
10961 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
10962 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
10963 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
10964 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
10965 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
10966 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
10967 training is anyway very important</p>
10968
10969 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
10970 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
10971 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
10972 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
10973 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
10974
10975 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10976 project?</strong></p>
10977
10978 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
10979 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
10980 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
10981 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
10982 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
10983 hole.</p>
10984
10985 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10986 Edu?</strong></p>
10987
10988 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
10989 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
10990 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
10991 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
10992 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
10993 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
10994 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
10995 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
10996 hassle.</p>
10997
10998 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10999 Edu?</strong></p>
11000
11001 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
11002 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
11003 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
11004 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
11005 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
11006 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
11007 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
11008 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
11009
11010 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11011
11012 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
11013 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
11014 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
11015 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
11016 has the same...</p>
11017
11018 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
11019 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
11020 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
11021 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
11022
11023 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11024 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11025
11026 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
11027 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
11028 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
11029
11030 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
11031 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
11032 don't.</p>
11033
11034 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
11035 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
11036 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
11037 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
11038 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
11039 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
11040 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
11041
11042       </div>
11043       <div class="tags">
11044
11045
11046         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>.
11047
11048
11049       </div>
11050     </div>
11051     <div class="padding"></div>
11052
11053     <div class="entry">
11054       <div class="title">
11055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
11056       </div>
11057       <div class="date">
11058         15th September 2012
11059       </div>
11060       <div class="body">
11061         <p>After the
11062 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
11063 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
11064 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
11065 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
11066 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
11067 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
11068 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
11069 was
11070 <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
11071 formal working group should be formed.</p>
11072
11073 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
11074 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
11075 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
11076 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
11077 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
11078 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
11079 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
11080 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
11081
11082 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
11083 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
11084 IETF.</p>
11085
11086       </div>
11087       <div class="tags">
11088
11089
11090         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>.
11091
11092
11093       </div>
11094     </div>
11095     <div class="padding"></div>
11096
11097     <div class="entry">
11098       <div class="title">
11099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
11100       </div>
11101       <div class="date">
11102         12th September 2012
11103       </div>
11104       <div class="body">
11105         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
11106 publication of of
11107 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
11108 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
11109 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
11110 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
11111 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
11112 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
11113 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
11114 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
11115 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
11116 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
11117
11118 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
11119 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
11120 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
11121 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
11122
11123 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
11124 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
11125
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="tags">
11128
11129
11130         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>.
11131
11132
11133       </div>
11134     </div>
11135     <div class="padding"></div>
11136
11137     <div class="entry">
11138       <div class="title">
11139         <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>
11140       </div>
11141       <div class="date">
11142          7th September 2012
11143       </div>
11144       <div class="body">
11145         <p>As I
11146 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
11147 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
11148 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
11149 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
11150 repository for the project</a>.</p>
11151
11152 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
11153 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
11154 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
11155 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
11156
11157 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
11158 PostScript formats at
11159 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
11160 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
11161
11162       </div>
11163       <div class="tags">
11164
11165
11166         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>.
11167
11168
11169       </div>
11170     </div>
11171     <div class="padding"></div>
11172
11173     <div class="entry">
11174       <div class="title">
11175         <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>
11176       </div>
11177       <div class="date">
11178         23rd August 2012
11179       </div>
11180       <div class="body">
11181         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
11182 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
11183 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
11184 revisit the great site
11185 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
11186 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
11187 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
11188
11189       </div>
11190       <div class="tags">
11191
11192
11193         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>.
11194
11195
11196       </div>
11197     </div>
11198     <div class="padding"></div>
11199
11200     <div class="entry">
11201       <div class="title">
11202         <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>
11203       </div>
11204       <div class="date">
11205         17th August 2012
11206       </div>
11207       <div class="body">
11208         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
11209 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
11210 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
11211 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
11212 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
11213 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
11214 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
11215 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
11216 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
11217 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
11218 summer I
11219 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
11220 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
11221 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
11222
11223 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
11224 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
11225 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
11226 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
11227 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
11228 progress:</p>
11229
11230 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
11231
11232 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
11233 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
11234 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
11235 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
11236 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
11237 english version of the docbook source.</p>
11238
11239 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
11240 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
11241 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
11242 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
11243 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
11244 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
11245 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
11246 project files currently available from <a
11247 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11248
11249 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
11250 the updated
11251 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
11252 and
11253 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
11254 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
11255 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
11256 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
11257
11258       </div>
11259       <div class="tags">
11260
11261
11262         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>.
11263
11264
11265       </div>
11266     </div>
11267     <div class="padding"></div>
11268
11269     <div class="entry">
11270       <div class="title">
11271         <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>
11272       </div>
11273       <div class="date">
11274         10th August 2012
11275       </div>
11276       <div class="body">
11277         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
11278 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
11279 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
11280 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
11281 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
11282 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
11283 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
11284 case for the language
11285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
11286 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
11287
11288 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
11289 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
11290 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
11291 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
11292 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
11293
11294 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
11295 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
11296 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
11297 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
11298 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
11299 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
11300 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
11301 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
11302 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
11303 alias for 'nb'.</p>
11304
11305 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
11306 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
11307 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
11308 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
11309 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
11310 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
11311 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
11312 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
11313 at the same time. :(</p>
11314
11315 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
11316 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
11317 processors. :(</p>
11318
11319 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
11320
11321       </div>
11322       <div class="tags">
11323
11324
11325         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>.
11326
11327
11328       </div>
11329     </div>
11330     <div class="padding"></div>
11331
11332     <div class="entry">
11333       <div class="title">
11334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
11335       </div>
11336       <div class="date">
11337         31st July 2012
11338       </div>
11339       <div class="body">
11340         <p>I tried to send this text to the
11341 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
11342 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
11343 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
11344 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
11345 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
11346 out.</p>
11347
11348 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
11349 learning curve at the moment.</p>
11350
11351 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
11352 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
11353 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
11354 available from
11355 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
11356 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
11357 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
11358 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
11359 Squeeze.</p>
11360
11361 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
11362 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
11363 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
11364 problems.</p>
11365
11366 <ul>
11367
11368 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
11369    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
11370    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
11371    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
11372    index references spanning several pages (See
11373    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
11374    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
11375    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
11376
11377 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
11378    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
11379    #683163</a>).</li>
11380
11381 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
11382    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
11383    footnote and text body, see
11384    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
11385    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
11386    refs listed are not right).</li>
11387
11388 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
11389
11390 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
11391    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
11392
11393 </ul>
11394
11395 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
11396 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
11397 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
11398
11399 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
11400
11401       </div>
11402       <div class="tags">
11403
11404
11405         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>.
11406
11407
11408       </div>
11409     </div>
11410     <div class="padding"></div>
11411
11412     <div class="entry">
11413       <div class="title">
11414         <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>
11415       </div>
11416       <div class="date">
11417         21st July 2012
11418       </div>
11419       <div class="body">
11420         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
11421 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
11422 norwegian version</a> of the book
11423 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
11424 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
11425 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
11426 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
11427 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11428
11429 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
11430 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
11431 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
11432 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
11433 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
11434 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
11435 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
11436 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
11437 print. :)</p>
11438
11439 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
11440 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
11441 language.</p>
11442
11443       </div>
11444       <div class="tags">
11445
11446
11447         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>.
11448
11449
11450       </div>
11451     </div>
11452     <div class="padding"></div>
11453
11454     <div class="entry">
11455       <div class="title">
11456         <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>
11457       </div>
11458       <div class="date">
11459         16th July 2012
11460       </div>
11461       <div class="body">
11462         <p>I am currently working on a
11463 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
11464 to translate</a> the book
11465 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
11466 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
11467 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
11468 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
11469 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
11470 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
11471 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11472
11473 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
11474 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
11475 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
11476 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
11477 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
11478 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
11479 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
11480 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
11481 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
11482
11483       </div>
11484       <div class="tags">
11485
11486
11487         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>.
11488
11489
11490       </div>
11491     </div>
11492     <div class="padding"></div>
11493
11494     <div class="entry">
11495       <div class="title">
11496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
11497       </div>
11498       <div class="date">
11499          9th July 2012
11500       </div>
11501       <div class="body">
11502         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11503 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
11504 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
11505 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
11506 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
11507 to adjust and scale the just released
11508 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11509 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
11510 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
11511
11512 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11513
11514 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
11515 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
11516 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
11517 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
11518 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
11519 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
11520 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
11521 perspective when working with IT.</p>
11522
11523 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11524 project?</strong></p>
11525
11526 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
11527 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
11528 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
11529 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
11530 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
11531 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
11532
11533 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11534 Edu?</strong></p>
11535
11536 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
11537 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
11538 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
11539 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
11540 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
11541 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
11542 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
11543 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
11544 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
11545 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
11546 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
11547 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
11548 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
11549 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
11550 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
11551 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
11552 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
11553 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
11554 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
11555 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
11556 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
11557 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
11558 quicker to update.
11559
11560 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11561 Edu?</strong></p>
11562
11563 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
11564 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
11565 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
11566 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
11567 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
11568 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
11569
11570 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
11571 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
11572 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
11573 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
11574 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
11575 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
11576 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
11577 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
11578 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
11579 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
11580 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
11581 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
11582 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
11583 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
11584 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
11585
11586 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
11587 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
11588 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
11589 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
11590 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
11591 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
11592 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
11593 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
11594
11595 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
11596 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
11597 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
11598 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
11599 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
11600 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
11601 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
11602 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
11603 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
11604 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
11605 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
11606 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
11607 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
11608 sound file.</p>
11609
11610 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
11611 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
11612 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
11613 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
11614 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
11615 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
11616 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
11617 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
11618 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
11619
11620 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11621
11622 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
11623 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
11624 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
11625 )</p>
11626
11627 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11628 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11629
11630 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
11631 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
11632 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
11633 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
11634 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
11635 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
11636 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
11637 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
11638 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
11639 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
11640 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
11641 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
11642 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
11643 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
11644 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
11645
11646 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
11647 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
11648 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
11649 management with Airtime</a>,
11650 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
11651 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
11652 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
11653 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
11654 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
11655
11656       </div>
11657       <div class="tags">
11658
11659
11660         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>.
11661
11662
11663       </div>
11664     </div>
11665     <div class="padding"></div>
11666
11667     <div class="entry">
11668       <div class="title">
11669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
11670       </div>
11671       <div class="date">
11672          8th July 2012
11673       </div>
11674       <div class="body">
11675         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
11676 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
11677 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
11678 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
11679 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
11680 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
11681 Steinberg in his blog post
11682 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
11683 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
11684 spending of your tax money.</p>
11685
11686 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
11687 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
11688 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
11689 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
11690 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
11691 purchases.</p>
11692
11693       </div>
11694       <div class="tags">
11695
11696
11697         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>.
11698
11699
11700       </div>
11701     </div>
11702     <div class="padding"></div>
11703
11704     <div class="entry">
11705       <div class="title">
11706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
11707       </div>
11708       <div class="date">
11709          7th July 2012
11710       </div>
11711       <div class="body">
11712         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11713 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
11714 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
11715 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
11716 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
11717 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
11718 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
11719 receive.  The software is
11720
11721 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
11722 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
11723 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
11724 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
11725 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
11726 Windows</a>.</p>
11727
11728 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
11729 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
11730
11731 <p><ul>
11732
11733   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
11734     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
11735
11736   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
11737     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
11738     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
11739     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
11740     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
11741     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
11742     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
11743     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
11744     </li>
11745
11746   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
11747     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
11748
11749   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
11750     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
11751
11752   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
11753     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
11754
11755   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
11756
11757   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
11758     formats </li>
11759
11760   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
11761     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
11762     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
11763     (as separate sets)</li>
11764
11765   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
11766     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
11767     percentage)</li>
11768
11769   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
11770     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
11771     memory):
11772     <ul>
11773       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
11774       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
11775       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
11776       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
11777       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
11778       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
11779       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
11780       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
11781       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
11782       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
11783           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
11784           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
11785           activity)</li>
11786       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
11787       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
11788     </ul></li>
11789
11790   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
11791     <ul>
11792       <li>Break periods</li>
11793       <li>For teacher(s):
11794         <ul>
11795           <li>Not available periods</li>
11796           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
11797           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11798           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11799           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11800           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11801
11802           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11803             days per week</li>
11804         </ul></li>
11805       <li>For students (sets):
11806         <ul>
11807           <li>Not available periods</li>
11808           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
11809           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11810           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11811           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11812           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11813
11814           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11815             days per week</li>
11816         </ul></li>
11817       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
11818         <ul>
11819           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
11820           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
11821           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
11822           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
11823           <li>End(s) students day</li>
11824           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
11825           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
11826             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
11827           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
11828           <li>Not overlapping</li>
11829           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
11830           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
11831         </ul></li>
11832     </ul></li>
11833
11834   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
11835     <ul>
11836       <li>Room not available periods</li>
11837       <li>For teacher(s):
11838         <ul>
11839           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11840           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11841           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11842         </ul>
11843       </li>
11844
11845       <li>For students (sets):
11846         <ul>
11847           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11848           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11849           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11850         </ul>
11851       </li>
11852       <li>Preferred room(s):
11853         <ul>
11854           <li>For a subject</li>
11855           <li>For an activity tag</li>
11856           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
11857           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
11858         </ul>
11859       </li>
11860
11861       <li>For a set of activities:
11862         <ul>
11863           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
11864         </ul>
11865       </li>
11866     </ul>
11867   </li>
11868 </ul></p>
11869
11870 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
11871 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
11872 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
11873 manually, check it out.
11874
11875 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
11876 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
11877 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
11878 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
11879 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
11880 section</a>.</p>
11881
11882       </div>
11883       <div class="tags">
11884
11885
11886         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>.
11887
11888
11889       </div>
11890     </div>
11891     <div class="padding"></div>
11892
11893     <div class="entry">
11894       <div class="title">
11895         <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>
11896       </div>
11897       <div class="date">
11898          3rd July 2012
11899       </div>
11900       <div class="body">
11901         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
11902 project (Norwegian version of
11903 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
11904 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
11905 a problem with the municipalities using
11906 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
11907 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
11908 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
11909 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
11910 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
11911 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
11912 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
11913 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
11914 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
11915 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
11916 the From: header.</p>
11917
11918 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
11919 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
11920 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
11921 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
11922 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
11923 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
11924 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
11925 behaviour.</p>
11926
11927 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
11928 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
11929 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
11930 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
11931 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
11932 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11933 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
11934
11935       </div>
11936       <div class="tags">
11937
11938
11939         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>.
11940
11941
11942       </div>
11943     </div>
11944     <div class="padding"></div>
11945
11946     <div class="entry">
11947       <div class="title">
11948         <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>
11949       </div>
11950       <div class="date">
11951         26th June 2012
11952       </div>
11953       <div class="body">
11954         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
11955 another interview with the people behind
11956 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
11957 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
11958 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
11959 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
11960 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
11961 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11962 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11963
11964 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11965
11966 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
11967 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
11968 ICT in schools</p>
11969
11970 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11971 project?</strong></p>
11972
11973 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
11974 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
11975 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
11976 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
11977
11978 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11979 Edu?</strong></p>
11980
11981 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
11982 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
11983 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
11984 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
11985
11986 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11987 Edu?</strong></p>
11988
11989 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
11990 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
11991 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
11992 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
11993 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
11994 technologies in school.</p>
11995
11996 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11997
11998 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
11999 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
12000 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
12001
12002 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12003 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12004
12005 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
12006 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
12007 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
12008 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
12009
12010 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
12011 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
12012 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
12013
12014 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
12015 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
12016 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
12017 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
12018 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
12019 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
12020 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
12021 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
12022 working there.</p>
12023
12024       </div>
12025       <div class="tags">
12026
12027
12028         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>.
12029
12030
12031       </div>
12032     </div>
12033     <div class="padding"></div>
12034
12035     <div class="entry">
12036       <div class="title">
12037         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12038       </div>
12039       <div class="date">
12040         24th June 2012
12041       </div>
12042       <div class="body">
12043         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12044 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
12045 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
12046 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12047 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12048 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
12049 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12050 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12051 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
12052 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
12053 missing in my book.</p>
12054
12055 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12056 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12057 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12058 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12059 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
12060 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12061 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
12062
12063       </div>
12064       <div class="tags">
12065
12066
12067         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>.
12068
12069
12070       </div>
12071     </div>
12072     <div class="padding"></div>
12073
12074     <div class="entry">
12075       <div class="title">
12076         <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>
12077       </div>
12078       <div class="date">
12079         11th June 2012
12080       </div>
12081       <div class="body">
12082         <p>During my work on
12083 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
12084 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
12085 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
12086 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
12087 explanation.</p>
12088
12089 <p><ul>
12090
12091 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
12092 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
12093 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
12094 system depend on tasksel tasks in
12095 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
12096 installation.</li>
12097
12098 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
12099 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
12100 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
12101 at least try to enable it for these services:
12102 <ul>
12103
12104   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
12105     quotas.</li>
12106   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
12107   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
12108   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
12109   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
12110   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
12111
12112 </ul></li>
12113
12114 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
12115 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
12116 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
12117 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
12118
12119 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
12120 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
12121 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
12122
12123 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
12124 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
12125 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
12126 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
12127 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
12128 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
12129
12130 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
12131 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
12132 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
12133 in Wheezy.
12134
12135 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
12136 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
12137 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
12138
12139 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
12140 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
12141 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
12142 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
12143
12144 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
12145 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
12146 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
12147 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
12148
12149 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
12150 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
12151 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
12152
12153 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
12154 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
12155 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
12156
12157 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
12158 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
12159 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
12160 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
12161 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
12162
12163 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
12164 <ul>
12165
12166 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
12167 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
12168 <li>and probably more?</li>
12169 </ul></li>
12170
12171 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
12172 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
12173 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
12174 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
12175 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
12176 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
12177 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
12178 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
12179
12180
12181 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
12182 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
12183 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
12184 use.</li>
12185
12186 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
12187 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
12188 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
12189 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
12190 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
12191
12192 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
12193 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
12194 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
12195 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
12196 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
12197 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
12198
12199 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
12200 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
12201 There are at least three implementations,
12202 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
12203 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
12204 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
12205 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
12206 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
12207 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
12208 given room.</li>
12209
12210 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
12211 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
12212 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
12213 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
12214 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
12215 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
12216 investigated.</li>
12217
12218 </ul></p>
12219
12220 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
12221 version.</p>
12222
12223       </div>
12224       <div class="tags">
12225
12226
12227         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>.
12228
12229
12230       </div>
12231     </div>
12232     <div class="padding"></div>
12233
12234     <div class="entry">
12235       <div class="title">
12236         <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>
12237       </div>
12238       <div class="date">
12239          9th June 2012
12240       </div>
12241       <div class="body">
12242         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
12243 <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
12244 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
12245 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
12246 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
12247 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
12248 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
12249 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
12250 be willing to pay for.</p>
12251
12252 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
12253 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
12254 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
12255 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
12256 Orwell</a>.</p>
12257
12258       </div>
12259       <div class="tags">
12260
12261
12262         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>.
12263
12264
12265       </div>
12266     </div>
12267     <div class="padding"></div>
12268
12269     <div class="entry">
12270       <div class="title">
12271         <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>
12272       </div>
12273       <div class="date">
12274          6th June 2012
12275       </div>
12276       <div class="body">
12277         <p>A few days ago
12278 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
12279 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
12280 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
12281 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
12282 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
12283 code for HP, Dell and IBM
12284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
12285 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
12286 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
12287 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
12288 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
12289
12290 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
12291 output:
12292
12293 <blockquote><pre>
12294 % 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>
12295 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": ""})
12296 %
12297 </pre></blockquote>
12298
12299 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
12300 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
12301 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
12302
12303       </div>
12304       <div class="tags">
12305
12306
12307         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>.
12308
12309
12310       </div>
12311     </div>
12312     <div class="padding"></div>
12313
12314     <div class="entry">
12315       <div class="title">
12316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
12317       </div>
12318       <div class="date">
12319          2nd June 2012
12320       </div>
12321       <div class="body">
12322         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
12323 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12324 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
12325 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
12326 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12327 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12328
12329 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12330
12331 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
12332 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
12333 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
12334 by Angela).</p>
12335
12336 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
12337 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
12338 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
12339 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
12340 becoming an osteopath.</p>
12341
12342 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
12343 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
12344 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
12345 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
12346 skills with communication skills.</p>
12347
12348 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12349 project?</strong></p>
12350
12351 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
12352 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
12353 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
12354 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
12355 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
12356
12357 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
12358 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
12359 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
12360 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
12361 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
12362 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
12363 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
12364 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
12365 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
12366
12367 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
12368 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
12369 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
12370
12371 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
12372
12373 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
12374 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
12375 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
12376 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
12377 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
12378 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
12379 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
12380 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
12381 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
12382 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
12383 point.</p>
12384
12385 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
12386 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
12387 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
12388 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
12389 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
12390 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
12391
12392 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
12393 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
12394 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
12395 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
12396 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
12397 spare time.</p>
12398
12399 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
12400 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
12401 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
12402 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
12403 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
12404
12405 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
12406 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
12407 avoidance do exist.</p>
12408
12409 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
12410 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
12411 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
12412 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
12413 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
12414 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
12415 and probably a gain for all.</p>
12416
12417 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12418 Edu?</strong></p>
12419
12420 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
12421 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
12422 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
12423 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
12424 project communication, honest communication within the group of
12425 developers, etc.</p>
12426
12427 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12428 Edu?</strong></p>
12429
12430 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
12431
12432 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
12433 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
12434 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
12435 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
12436 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
12437 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
12438 contribute).</p>
12439
12440 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
12441 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
12442 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
12443 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
12444 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
12445 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
12446 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
12447 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
12448 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
12449 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
12450
12451 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12452
12453 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
12454
12455 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
12456 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
12457 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
12458
12459 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
12460 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
12461 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
12462 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
12463
12464 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
12465 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
12466 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
12467 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
12468 whiteboard.</p>
12469
12470 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
12471
12472 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12473 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12474
12475 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
12476 enrol people.</p>
12477
12478       </div>
12479       <div class="tags">
12480
12481
12482         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>.
12483
12484
12485       </div>
12486     </div>
12487     <div class="padding"></div>
12488
12489     <div class="entry">
12490       <div class="title">
12491         <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>
12492       </div>
12493       <div class="date">
12494          1st June 2012
12495       </div>
12496       <div class="body">
12497         <p>A few years ago I wrote
12498 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
12499 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
12500 I have learned from colleges here at the
12501 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
12502 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
12503 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
12504 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
12505 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
12506
12507 <p><pre>
12508 use strict;
12509 use warnings;
12510 use SOAP::Lite;
12511 use Data::Dumper;
12512 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
12513 my $App = 'test';
12514 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
12515 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
12516 my $s = SOAP::Lite
12517     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
12518     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
12519     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
12520     ;
12521 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
12522     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
12523     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
12524     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
12525 );
12526 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
12527 </pre></p>
12528
12529 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
12530
12531 <p><pre>
12532 $VAR1 = {
12533           'Asset' => {
12534                      'Entitlements' => {
12535                                        'EntitlementData' => [
12536                                                             {
12537                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12538                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12539                                                               'Provider' => '',
12540                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12541                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12542                                                             },
12543                                                             {
12544                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12545                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12546                                                               'Provider' => '',
12547                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12548                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12549                                                             },
12550                                                             {
12551                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12552                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
12553                                                               'Provider' => '',
12554                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12555                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12556                                                             }
12557                                                           ]
12558                                      },
12559                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
12560                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
12561                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
12562                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
12563                                           'Buid' => '2323',
12564                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
12565                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
12566                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
12567                                         }
12568                    }
12569         };
12570 </pre></p>
12571
12572 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
12573 service outside the
12574 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
12575 documentation</a>, and according to
12576 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
12577 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
12578 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
12579
12580 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
12581 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
12582
12583       </div>
12584       <div class="tags">
12585
12586
12587         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>.
12588
12589
12590       </div>
12591     </div>
12592     <div class="padding"></div>
12593
12594     <div class="entry">
12595       <div class="title">
12596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
12597       </div>
12598       <div class="date">
12599         31st May 2012
12600       </div>
12601       <div class="body">
12602         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
12603 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
12604 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
12605 running Debian Squeeze, where
12606 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
12607 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
12608 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
12609 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
12610 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
12611 another day.</p>
12612
12613 <p>After calibration, I get a
12614 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
12615 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
12616 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
12617 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
12618 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
12619 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
12620 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
12621 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
12622 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
12623 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
12624 and a simple</p>
12625
12626 <p><pre>
12627 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
12628 </pre></p>
12629
12630 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
12631 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
12632 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
12633 enough for now.</p>
12634
12635       </div>
12636       <div class="tags">
12637
12638
12639         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12640
12641
12642       </div>
12643     </div>
12644     <div class="padding"></div>
12645
12646     <div class="entry">
12647       <div class="title">
12648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
12649       </div>
12650       <div class="date">
12651         27th May 2012
12652       </div>
12653       <div class="body">
12654         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
12655 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12656 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
12657 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
12658 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
12659 since then, helping to make sure the
12660 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12661 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
12662
12663 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12664
12665 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
12666 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
12667 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
12668 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
12669 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
12670 our computer network.</p>
12671
12672 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
12673 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
12674 (4 months).</p>
12675
12676 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12677 project?</strong></p>
12678
12679 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
12680 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
12681 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
12682 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
12683 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
12684 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
12685 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
12686 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
12687 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
12688 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
12689 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
12690 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
12691 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
12692 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
12693
12694 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12695 Edu?</strong></p>
12696
12697 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
12698 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
12699 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
12700 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
12701 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
12702 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
12703 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
12704 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
12705
12706 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12707 Edu?</strong></p>
12708
12709 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
12710 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
12711 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
12712 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
12713 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
12714 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
12715 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
12716 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
12717 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
12718 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
12719 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
12720 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
12721
12722 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12723
12724 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
12725 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
12726 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
12727
12728 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12729 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12730
12731 <p><ol>
12732
12733 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
12734 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
12735 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
12736 developing.</li>
12737
12738 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
12739 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
12740 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
12741 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
12742 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
12743
12744 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
12745 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
12746 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
12747
12748 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
12749 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
12750 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
12751 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
12752
12753 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
12754 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
12755 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
12756
12757 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
12758
12759 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
12760 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
12761 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
12762 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
12763
12764 </ol></p>
12765
12766       </div>
12767       <div class="tags">
12768
12769
12770         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>.
12771
12772
12773       </div>
12774     </div>
12775     <div class="padding"></div>
12776
12777     <div class="entry">
12778       <div class="title">
12779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
12780       </div>
12781       <div class="date">
12782         26th May 2012
12783       </div>
12784       <div class="body">
12785         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
12786 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
12787 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
12788 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
12789 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
12790
12791 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
12792 <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>
12793 comment:</p>
12794
12795 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
12796 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
12797 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
12798 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
12799 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
12800 </blockquote></p>
12801
12802 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
12803 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
12804 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
12805 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
12806 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
12807 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
12808 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
12809 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
12810 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
12811 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
12812 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
12813 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
12814 of wasted effort.</p>
12815
12816 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
12817 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
12818 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
12819
12820 <p>See
12821 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
12822 and
12823 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
12824 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
12825 </blockquote></p>
12826
12827       </div>
12828       <div class="tags">
12829
12830
12831         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>.
12832
12833
12834       </div>
12835     </div>
12836     <div class="padding"></div>
12837
12838     <div class="entry">
12839       <div class="title">
12840         <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>
12841       </div>
12842       <div class="date">
12843         18th May 2012
12844       </div>
12845       <div class="body">
12846         <p>In january, I
12847 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
12848 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
12849 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
12850 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
12851 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
12852 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
12853 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
12854 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
12855 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
12856 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
12857
12858 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
12859 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
12860 drivers. :)</p>
12861
12862       </div>
12863       <div class="tags">
12864
12865
12866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12867
12868
12869       </div>
12870     </div>
12871     <div class="padding"></div>
12872
12873     <div class="entry">
12874       <div class="title">
12875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
12876       </div>
12877       <div class="date">
12878         13th May 2012
12879       </div>
12880       <div class="body">
12881         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
12882 publish another interview with the people behind
12883 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12884 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
12885 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
12886 details get right before release.
12887
12888 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12889
12890 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
12891 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
12892 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
12893 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
12894 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
12895 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
12896 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
12897 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
12898
12899 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
12900 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
12901 home since 2006.</p>
12902
12903 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12904 project?</strong></p>
12905
12906 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
12907 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
12908 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
12909 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
12910 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
12911 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
12912
12913 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
12914 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
12915 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
12916 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
12917 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
12918 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
12919 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
12920 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
12921 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
12922 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
12923 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
12924 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
12925 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
12926 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
12927 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
12928 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
12929
12930 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12931 Edu?</strong></p>
12932
12933 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
12934 for me as today.</p>
12935
12936 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
12937
12938 <p><ul>
12939
12940 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
12941 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
12942
12943 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
12944 cost.</li>
12945
12946 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
12947 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
12948 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
12949 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
12950 server</li>
12951
12952 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
12953 school.</li>
12954
12955 </ul></p>
12956
12957 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
12958 came up in this way:</p>
12959
12960 <p><ul>
12961
12962 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
12963 now.</li>
12964
12965 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
12966 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
12967 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
12968
12969 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
12970 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
12971 interfaces used in the past.</li>
12972
12973 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
12974 different needs.</li>
12975
12976 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
12977
12978 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
12979 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
12980 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
12981
12982 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
12983 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
12984
12985 </ul></p>
12986
12987 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12988 Edu?</strong></p>
12989
12990 <p><ul>
12991
12992 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
12993 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
12994 whole municipality areas.</li>
12995
12996 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
12997 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
12998 politicians.</li>
12999
13000 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
13001
13002 </ul></p>
13003
13004 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13005
13006 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
13007 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
13008 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
13009 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
13010 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
13011 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
13012
13013 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
13014 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
13015 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
13016 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
13017 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
13018
13019 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13020 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13021
13022 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
13023 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
13024 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
13025
13026       </div>
13027       <div class="tags">
13028
13029
13030         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>.
13031
13032
13033       </div>
13034     </div>
13035     <div class="padding"></div>
13036
13037     <div class="entry">
13038       <div class="title">
13039         <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>
13040       </div>
13041       <div class="date">
13042         30th April 2012
13043       </div>
13044       <div class="body">
13045         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
13046 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
13047
13048 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
13049 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
13050 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
13051 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
13052 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
13053 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
13054 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
13055 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
13056 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
13057 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
13058 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
13059 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
13060 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
13061 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
13062 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
13063 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
13064
13065 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
13066 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
13067 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
13068 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
13069 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
13070 finally found a Danish supplier
13071 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
13072 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
13073 days ago.</p>
13074
13075 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
13076 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
13077 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
13078 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
13079 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
13080 toys.</p>
13081
13082       </div>
13083       <div class="tags">
13084
13085
13086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13087
13088
13089       </div>
13090     </div>
13091     <div class="padding"></div>
13092
13093     <div class="entry">
13094       <div class="title">
13095         <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>
13096       </div>
13097       <div class="date">
13098         26th April 2012
13099       </div>
13100       <div class="body">
13101         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
13102 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
13103 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
13104 that the video editor application included with
13105 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
13106 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
13107 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
13108
13109 <p><blockquote>
13110 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
13111 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
13112 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
13113 </blockquote></p>
13114
13115 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
13116
13117 <p><blockquote>
13118 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
13119 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
13120 </blockquote></p>
13121
13122 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
13123 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
13124 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
13125 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
13126 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
13127 video.  AMR is
13128 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
13129 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
13130 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
13131 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
13132 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
13133 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
13134 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
13135
13136 <p>I know why I prefer
13137 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
13138 standards</a> also for video.</p>
13139
13140       </div>
13141       <div class="tags">
13142
13143
13144         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>.
13145
13146
13147       </div>
13148     </div>
13149     <div class="padding"></div>
13150
13151     <div class="entry">
13152       <div class="title">
13153         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
13154       </div>
13155       <div class="date">
13156         19th April 2012
13157       </div>
13158       <div class="body">
13159         <p>Here in Norway, the
13160 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
13161 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
13162 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
13163 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
13164 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
13165 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
13166 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
13167 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
13168 on the same level.</p>
13169
13170 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
13171 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
13172 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
13173 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
13174 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
13175 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
13176 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
13177 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
13178 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
13179 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
13180 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
13181 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
13182 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
13183 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
13184 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
13185 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
13186 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
13187 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
13188
13189 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
13190 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
13191 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
13192 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
13193 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
13194 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
13195 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
13196 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
13197
13198 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
13199 from Simon Phipps
13200 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
13201 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
13202
13203 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
13204 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
13205 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
13206 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
13207 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
13208 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
13209 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
13210 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
13211 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
13212
13213       </div>
13214       <div class="tags">
13215
13216
13217         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>.
13218
13219
13220       </div>
13221     </div>
13222     <div class="padding"></div>
13223
13224     <div class="entry">
13225       <div class="title">
13226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
13227       </div>
13228       <div class="date">
13229         15th April 2012
13230       </div>
13231       <div class="body">
13232         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13233 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
13234 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
13235 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
13236 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
13237 up in the recently released
13238 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
13239 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13240
13241 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13242
13243 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
13244 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
13245 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
13246 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
13247 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
13248 information technology and science/technology.</p>
13249
13250 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13251 project?</strong></p>
13252
13253 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
13254 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
13255 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
13256 contributing.</p>
13257
13258 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13259 Edu?</strong></p>
13260
13261 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
13262 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
13263 Debian Project!</p>
13264
13265 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13266 Edu?</strong></p>
13267
13268 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
13269 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
13270 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
13271 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
13272 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
13273 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
13274 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
13275
13276 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
13277 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
13278
13279 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13280
13281 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
13282 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
13283 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
13284 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
13285
13286 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13287 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13288
13289 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
13290 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
13291 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
13292 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
13293 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
13294 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
13295 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
13296
13297 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
13298 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
13299 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
13300 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
13301 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
13302 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
13303 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
13304 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
13305
13306       </div>
13307       <div class="tags">
13308
13309
13310         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>.
13311
13312
13313       </div>
13314     </div>
13315     <div class="padding"></div>
13316
13317     <div class="entry">
13318       <div class="title">
13319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
13320       </div>
13321       <div class="date">
13322          8th April 2012
13323       </div>
13324       <div class="body">
13325         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
13326 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
13327 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
13328 contributor to the
13329 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
13330 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
13331
13332 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13333
13334 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
13335 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
13336
13337 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13338 project?</strong></p>
13339
13340 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
13341 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
13342 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
13343 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
13344 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
13345 "localisation".</p>
13346
13347 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13348 Edu?</strong></p>
13349
13350 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13351 Edu?</strong></p>
13352
13353 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
13354 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
13355 education system.</p>
13356
13357 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
13358 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
13359 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
13360 money on the latest hardware.</p>
13361
13362 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13363
13364 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
13365 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
13366 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
13367
13368 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13369 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13370
13371 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
13372 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
13373 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
13374
13375       </div>
13376       <div class="tags">
13377
13378
13379         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>.
13380
13381
13382       </div>
13383     </div>
13384     <div class="padding"></div>
13385
13386     <div class="entry">
13387       <div class="title">
13388         <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>
13389       </div>
13390       <div class="date">
13391          6th April 2012
13392       </div>
13393       <div class="body">
13394         <p>Recently I have spent time with
13395 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
13396 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13397 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
13398 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
13399 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
13400 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
13401 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
13402 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
13403
13404 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
13405 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
13406 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
13407 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
13408 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
13409 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
13410 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
13411 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
13412
13413 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
13414 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
13415 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
13416 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
13417 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
13418 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
13419 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
13420 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
13421
13422 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
13423 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
13424 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
13425 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
13426 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
13427 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
13428 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
13429 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
13430 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
13431 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
13432
13433 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
13434 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
13435 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
13436 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
13437
13438 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
13439 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
13440
13441       </div>
13442       <div class="tags">
13443
13444
13445         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>.
13446
13447
13448       </div>
13449     </div>
13450     <div class="padding"></div>
13451
13452     <div class="entry">
13453       <div class="title">
13454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
13455       </div>
13456       <div class="date">
13457          5th April 2012
13458       </div>
13459       <div class="body">
13460         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
13461 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
13462 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
13463 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
13464 for schools.  Check out his article
13465 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
13466 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
13467
13468       </div>
13469       <div class="tags">
13470
13471
13472         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>.
13473
13474
13475       </div>
13476     </div>
13477     <div class="padding"></div>
13478
13479     <div class="entry">
13480       <div class="title">
13481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
13482       </div>
13483       <div class="date">
13484          1st April 2012
13485       </div>
13486       <div class="body">
13487         <p>Germany is a core area for the
13488 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13489 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
13490 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
13491
13492 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13493
13494 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
13495 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
13496 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
13497 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
13498 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
13499 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
13500 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
13501 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
13502
13503 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
13504 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
13505 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
13506 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
13507 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
13508 the end of April this year.</p>
13509
13510 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13511 project?</strong></p>
13512
13513 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
13514 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
13515 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
13516 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
13517 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
13518 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
13519 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
13520 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
13521 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
13522 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
13523 Skolelinux.</p>
13524
13525 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
13526 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
13527 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
13528 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
13529 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
13530 the admin teachers.</p>
13531
13532 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13533 Edu?</strong></p>
13534
13535 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
13536 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
13537 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
13538
13539 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
13540 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
13541 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
13542 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
13543 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
13544
13545 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13546 Edu?</strong></p>
13547
13548 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
13549
13550 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13551
13552 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
13553 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
13554 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
13555 LibreOffice.</p>
13556
13557 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13558 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13559
13560 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
13561 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
13562 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
13563
13564       </div>
13565       <div class="tags">
13566
13567
13568         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>.
13569
13570
13571       </div>
13572     </div>
13573     <div class="padding"></div>
13574
13575     <div class="entry">
13576       <div class="title">
13577         <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>
13578       </div>
13579       <div class="date">
13580         25th March 2012
13581       </div>
13582       <div class="body">
13583         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13584
13585 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
13586 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
13587 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
13588 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
13589 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
13590 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
13591 and download as a
13592 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
13593 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13594
13595 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13596   <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"' />
13597     <p>Download video as
13598       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13599 </video></p>
13600
13601       </div>
13602       <div class="tags">
13603
13604
13605         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>.
13606
13607
13608       </div>
13609     </div>
13610     <div class="padding"></div>
13611
13612     <div class="entry">
13613       <div class="title">
13614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
13615       </div>
13616       <div class="date">
13617         19th March 2012
13618       </div>
13619       <div class="body">
13620         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13621 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
13622 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13623 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
13624 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
13625
13626 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13627
13628 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
13629 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
13630 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
13631 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
13632 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
13633 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
13634 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
13635 installations.</p>
13636
13637 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13638 project?</strong></p>
13639
13640 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
13641 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
13642 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
13643 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
13644 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
13645 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
13646 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
13647 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
13648 these things we decided to try it.</p>
13649
13650 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13651 Edu?</strong></p>
13652
13653 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
13654 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
13655 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
13656 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
13657 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
13658 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
13659 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
13660 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
13661
13662 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13663 Edu?</strong></p>
13664
13665 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
13666 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
13667 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
13668 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
13669 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
13670
13671 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13672
13673 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
13674 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
13675 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
13676 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
13677 that counts...)</p>
13678
13679 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13680 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13681
13682 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
13683 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
13684 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
13685 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
13686 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
13687 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
13688 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
13689 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
13690 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
13691 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
13692 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
13693
13694 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
13695 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
13696 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
13697
13698       </div>
13699       <div class="tags">
13700
13701
13702         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>.
13703
13704
13705       </div>
13706     </div>
13707     <div class="padding"></div>
13708
13709     <div class="entry">
13710       <div class="title">
13711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
13712       </div>
13713       <div class="date">
13714         16th March 2012
13715       </div>
13716       <div class="body">
13717         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
13718 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
13719 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
13720 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
13721
13722 <ol>
13723
13724 <li>The documentation is written in a
13725 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
13726 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
13727 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
13728 docbook XML.</li>
13729
13730 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
13731 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
13732 with the translated text.</li>
13733
13734 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
13735 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
13736 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
13737 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
13738 images.</li>
13739
13740 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
13741 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
13742
13743 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
13744 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
13745
13746 </ol>
13747
13748 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
13749 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
13750 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
13751 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
13752 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
13753
13754 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
13755 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
13756 package</a>.</p>
13757
13758       </div>
13759       <div class="tags">
13760
13761
13762         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>.
13763
13764
13765       </div>
13766     </div>
13767     <div class="padding"></div>
13768
13769     <div class="entry">
13770       <div class="title">
13771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
13772       </div>
13773       <div class="date">
13774         11th March 2012
13775       </div>
13776       <div class="body">
13777         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
13778 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
13779 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13780 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
13781 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
13782 you have not done so already.</p>
13783
13784 <p>I plan to present the new version at
13785 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
13786 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
13787 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
13788
13789       </div>
13790       <div class="tags">
13791
13792
13793         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>.
13794
13795
13796       </div>
13797     </div>
13798     <div class="padding"></div>
13799
13800     <div class="entry">
13801       <div class="title">
13802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
13803       </div>
13804       <div class="date">
13805          9th March 2012
13806       </div>
13807       <div class="body">
13808         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
13809 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
13810 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13811 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
13812 more international audience.</p>
13813
13814 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13815 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
13816 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
13817 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
13818 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
13819 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
13820 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
13821
13822
13823 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13824
13825 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
13826 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
13827 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
13828 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
13829 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
13830 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
13831 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
13832 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
13833 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
13834 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
13835 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
13836
13837 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13838 project?</strong></p>
13839
13840 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
13841 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
13842 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
13843 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
13844 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
13845 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
13846 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
13847 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
13848 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
13849 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
13850 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
13851 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
13852 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
13853
13854 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13855 Edu?</strong></p>
13856
13857 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
13858 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
13859 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
13860 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
13861 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
13862 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
13863 Japan.</p>
13864
13865 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13866 Edu?</strong></p>
13867
13868 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
13869 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
13870 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
13871 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
13872 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
13873 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
13874 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
13875 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
13876 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
13877 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
13878 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
13879 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
13880 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
13881 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
13882 help.</p>
13883
13884 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13885
13886 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
13887 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
13888 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
13889 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
13890 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
13891 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
13892 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
13893 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
13894 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
13895 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
13896 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
13897
13898 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13899 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13900
13901 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
13902 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
13903 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
13904 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
13905 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
13906 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
13907 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
13908 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
13909 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
13910 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
13911 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
13912 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
13913
13914       </div>
13915       <div class="tags">
13916
13917
13918         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>.
13919
13920
13921       </div>
13922     </div>
13923     <div class="padding"></div>
13924
13925     <div class="entry">
13926       <div class="title">
13927         <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>
13928       </div>
13929       <div class="date">
13930          7th March 2012
13931       </div>
13932       <div class="body">
13933         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13934
13935 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
13936 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
13937 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
13938 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
13939 download as a
13940 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
13941 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13942
13943 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13944   <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"' />
13945     <p>Download video as
13946       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13947 </video></p>
13948
13949       </div>
13950       <div class="tags">
13951
13952
13953         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>.
13954
13955
13956       </div>
13957     </div>
13958     <div class="padding"></div>
13959
13960     <div class="entry">
13961       <div class="title">
13962         <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>
13963       </div>
13964       <div class="date">
13965          4th March 2012
13966       </div>
13967       <div class="body">
13968         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
13969 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13970 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13971 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
13972 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
13973 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13974
13975       </div>
13976       <div class="tags">
13977
13978
13979         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>.
13980
13981
13982       </div>
13983     </div>
13984     <div class="padding"></div>
13985
13986     <div class="entry">
13987       <div class="title">
13988         <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>
13989       </div>
13990       <div class="date">
13991          3rd March 2012
13992       </div>
13993       <div class="body">
13994         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
13995 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
13996 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
13997 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
13998 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
13999 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
14000 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
14001 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
14002 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
14003 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
14004 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
14005 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
14006 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
14007 year...</p>
14008
14009 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
14010 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
14011 name,
14012 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
14013 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
14014 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
14015 mean). I've been following
14016 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
14017 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
14018 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
14019 Check it out. :)</p>
14020
14021       </div>
14022       <div class="tags">
14023
14024
14025         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>.
14026
14027
14028       </div>
14029     </div>
14030     <div class="padding"></div>
14031
14032     <div class="entry">
14033       <div class="title">
14034         <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>
14035       </div>
14036       <div class="date">
14037         27th February 2012
14038       </div>
14039       <div class="body">
14040         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
14041 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14042 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
14043 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
14044 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
14045 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
14046 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14047
14048       </div>
14049       <div class="tags">
14050
14051
14052         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>.
14053
14054
14055       </div>
14056     </div>
14057     <div class="padding"></div>
14058
14059     <div class="entry">
14060       <div class="title">
14061         <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>
14062       </div>
14063       <div class="date">
14064         19th February 2012
14065       </div>
14066       <div class="body">
14067         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
14068 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
14069 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14070 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14071 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
14072 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
14073 solution for your school.</p>
14074
14075       </div>
14076       <div class="tags">
14077
14078
14079         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>.
14080
14081
14082       </div>
14083     </div>
14084     <div class="padding"></div>
14085
14086     <div class="entry">
14087       <div class="title">
14088         <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>
14089       </div>
14090       <div class="date">
14091         14th February 2012
14092       </div>
14093       <div class="body">
14094         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
14095 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
14096 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
14097 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
14098 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
14099 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
14100 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
14101 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
14102 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
14103
14104 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
14105 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
14106 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
14107 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
14108 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
14109
14110 <blockquote><pre>
14111 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
14112 do
14113     printf "Failed disk $d: "
14114     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
14115 done
14116 </blockquote></pre>
14117
14118 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
14119 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
14120
14121 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
14122
14123 <blockquote><pre>
14124 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
14125 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
14126 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
14127 </blockquote></pre>
14128
14129 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
14130 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
14131 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
14132 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
14133 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
14134 mounted inside my box.</p>
14135
14136 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
14137 Software RAID in the
14138 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
14139 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
14140 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
14141 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
14142 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
14143 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
14144
14145       </div>
14146       <div class="tags">
14147
14148
14149         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>.
14150
14151
14152       </div>
14153     </div>
14154     <div class="padding"></div>
14155
14156     <div class="entry">
14157       <div class="title">
14158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14159       </div>
14160       <div class="date">
14161         13th February 2012
14162       </div>
14163       <div class="body">
14164         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
14165 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
14166 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
14167 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
14168 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
14169 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
14170 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
14171 change the global proxy setting by editing
14172 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
14173 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
14174
14175 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
14176 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
14177 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
14178
14179 <blockquote><pre>
14180 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
14181 {
14182    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
14183        isPlainHostName(host) ||
14184        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
14185       return "DIRECT";
14186    else
14187       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
14188 }
14189 </pre></blockquote>
14190
14191 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
14192
14193 <blockquote><pre>
14194 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
14195 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
14196 </pre></blockquote>
14197
14198 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
14199 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
14200 would be used for
14201 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
14202 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
14203 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
14204 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
14205 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
14206 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
14207 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
14208 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
14209 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
14210 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
14211
14212 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
14213 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
14214 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
14215 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
14216 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
14217 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
14218
14219 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
14220 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
14221 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
14222 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
14223 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
14224 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
14225 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
14226 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
14227 the network setup changes.</p>
14228
14229 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
14230 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
14231 draft</a> and a
14232 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
14233 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
14234
14235       </div>
14236       <div class="tags">
14237
14238
14239         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>.
14240
14241
14242       </div>
14243     </div>
14244     <div class="padding"></div>
14245
14246     <div class="entry">
14247       <div class="title">
14248         <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>
14249       </div>
14250       <div class="date">
14251          5th February 2012
14252       </div>
14253       <div class="body">
14254         <p>Since the Lenny version of
14255 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
14256 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
14257 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
14258 in the morning.  This is done using the
14259 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
14260
14261 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
14262 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
14263 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
14264 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
14265 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
14266 the
14267 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
14268 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
14269 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
14270 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
14271 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
14272
14273 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
14274 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
14275 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
14276 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
14277 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
14278 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
14279 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
14280
14281 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
14282 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
14283 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
14284 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
14285 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
14286
14287       </div>
14288       <div class="tags">
14289
14290
14291         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>.
14292
14293
14294       </div>
14295     </div>
14296     <div class="padding"></div>
14297
14298     <div class="entry">
14299       <div class="title">
14300         <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>
14301       </div>
14302       <div class="date">
14303          4th February 2012
14304       </div>
14305       <div class="body">
14306         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
14307 publish the third beta version of
14308 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14309 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
14310 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
14311 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
14312 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14313 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
14314 on the project announcement list.</p>
14315
14316 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
14317 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
14318
14319 <ul>
14320
14321 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
14322   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
14323   the installation.</li>
14324
14325 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
14326   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
14327
14328 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
14329   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
14330   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
14331
14332 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
14333   for the local system administrator is created during installation
14334   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
14335   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
14336   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
14337   up to date on the system.</li>
14338
14339 </ul>
14340
14341 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
14342 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
14343 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
14344 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
14345
14346 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
14347 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
14348 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
14349 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
14350 will see you there?</p>
14351
14352       </div>
14353       <div class="tags">
14354
14355
14356         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>.
14357
14358
14359       </div>
14360     </div>
14361     <div class="padding"></div>
14362
14363     <div class="entry">
14364       <div class="title">
14365         <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>
14366       </div>
14367       <div class="date">
14368         27th January 2012
14369       </div>
14370       <div class="body">
14371         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
14372 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
14373 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14374 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
14375 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
14376 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
14377 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
14378
14379 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
14380 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
14381 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
14382 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
14383 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
14384 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
14385 not taken care of by this.</p>
14386
14387 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
14388 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
14389 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
14390 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
14391 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
14392 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
14393 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
14394 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
14395 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
14396 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
14397 firmware packages.</p>
14398
14399 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
14400 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
14401 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
14402 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
14403 initrd with extra firmware, the
14404 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
14405 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
14406 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
14407
14408 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
14409 network cards working.  For this,
14410 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
14411 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
14412 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
14413
14414 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
14415 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
14416 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
14417
14418 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
14419 try.</p>
14420
14421       </div>
14422       <div class="tags">
14423
14424
14425         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>.
14426
14427
14428       </div>
14429     </div>
14430     <div class="padding"></div>
14431
14432     <div class="entry">
14433       <div class="title">
14434         <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>
14435       </div>
14436       <div class="date">
14437         25th January 2012
14438       </div>
14439       <div class="body">
14440         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
14441 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
14442 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
14443 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
14444 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
14445
14446 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
14447 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
14448 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
14449 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
14450 this is done, log on to the central server and run
14451 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
14452 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
14453 will look similar to this:</p>
14454
14455 <p><blockquote><pre>
14456 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
14457 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
14458 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.
14459
14460 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
14461
14462 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14463 enter password: *******
14464 %
14465 </pre></blockquote></p>
14466
14467 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
14468 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
14469 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
14470 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
14471 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
14472 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
14473 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
14474 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
14475 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
14476 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
14477 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
14478 automatically.</p>
14479
14480 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
14481 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
14482
14483 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
14484 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
14485 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
14486
14487       </div>
14488       <div class="tags">
14489
14490
14491         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>.
14492
14493
14494       </div>
14495     </div>
14496     <div class="padding"></div>
14497
14498     <div class="entry">
14499       <div class="title">
14500         <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>
14501       </div>
14502       <div class="date">
14503         10th January 2012
14504       </div>
14505       <div class="body">
14506         <p>In the Squeeze version of
14507 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
14508 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
14509 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
14510 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
14511 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
14512 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
14513 first time.</p>
14514
14515 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
14516 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
14517 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
14518 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
14519
14520 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
14521 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
14522 new setting.</p>
14523
14524 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
14525 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
14526 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
14527
14528       </div>
14529       <div class="tags">
14530
14531
14532         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>.
14533
14534
14535       </div>
14536     </div>
14537     <div class="padding"></div>
14538
14539     <div class="entry">
14540       <div class="title">
14541         <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>
14542       </div>
14543       <div class="date">
14544          7th January 2012
14545       </div>
14546       <div class="body">
14547         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
14548 the second beta version of
14549 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
14550 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
14551 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
14552 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
14553 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14554 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
14555 on the project announcement list.</p>
14556
14557       </div>
14558       <div class="tags">
14559
14560
14561         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14562
14563
14564       </div>
14565     </div>
14566     <div class="padding"></div>
14567
14568     <div class="entry">
14569       <div class="title">
14570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
14571       </div>
14572       <div class="date">
14573          3rd January 2012
14574       </div>
14575       <div class="body">
14576         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
14577 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
14578 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
14579 interesting.</p>
14580
14581 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
14582 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
14583 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
14584 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
14585 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
14586 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
14587 wrap up its tasks.</p>
14588
14589 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
14590 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
14591 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
14592 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
14593 because I was typing.</P>
14594
14595 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
14596 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
14597 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
14598 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
14599 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
14600 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
14601 generate entropy.</p>
14602
14603 <p>The fix is in
14604 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
14605 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
14606 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
14607 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
14608
14609       </div>
14610       <div class="tags">
14611
14612
14613         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>.
14614
14615
14616       </div>
14617     </div>
14618     <div class="padding"></div>
14619
14620     <div class="entry">
14621       <div class="title">
14622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
14623       </div>
14624       <div class="date">
14625         21st November 2011
14626       </div>
14627       <div class="body">
14628         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
14629 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
14630 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
14631 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
14632 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
14633 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
14634 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
14635 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
14636 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
14637 the tools to do so.</p>
14638
14639 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
14640 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
14641 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
14642 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
14643
14644 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
14645 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
14646 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
14647 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
14648 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
14649 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
14650 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
14651 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
14652
14653 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
14654 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
14655 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
14656
14657 <p><pre>
14658 #!/usr/bin/perl
14659 use strict;
14660 use warnings;
14661 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
14662 BEGIN {
14663     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
14664     my %rhelmodules = (
14665         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
14666         );
14667     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
14668         eval "use $module;";
14669         if ($@) {
14670             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
14671             system("yum install -y $pkg");
14672             eval "use $module;";
14673         }
14674     }
14675 }
14676 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
14677
14678 upgrade_dell();
14679
14680 exit 0;
14681
14682 sub run_firmware_script {
14683     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
14684     unless ($script) {
14685         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
14686         exit 1
14687     }
14688     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
14689
14690     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
14691         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
14692     } else {
14693         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
14694     }
14695 }
14696
14697 sub run_firmware_scripts {
14698     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
14699     # Run firmware packages
14700     for my $dir (@dirs) {
14701         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
14702         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
14703         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
14704             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
14705             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
14706         }
14707         closedir $dh;
14708     }
14709 }
14710
14711 sub download {
14712     my $url = shift;
14713     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
14714     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
14715 }
14716
14717 sub upgrade_dell {
14718     my @dirs;
14719     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14720     chomp $product;
14721
14722     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
14723
14724         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
14725         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
14726
14727         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
14728             CLEANUP => 1
14729             );
14730         chdir($tmpdir);
14731         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
14732         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
14733         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
14734         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
14735         my $fwopts = "-q";
14736         if (@paths) {
14737             for my $url (@paths) {
14738                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
14739             }
14740             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
14741         } else {
14742             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14743             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14744         }
14745         chdir('/');
14746     } else {
14747         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14748         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14749     }
14750 }
14751
14752 sub fetch_dell_fw {
14753     my $path = shift;
14754     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
14755     download($url);
14756 }
14757
14758 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
14759 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
14760 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
14761 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
14762     my $filename = shift;
14763
14764     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14765     chomp $product;
14766     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
14767
14768     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
14769
14770     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
14771     my @paths;
14772     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
14773         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
14774         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
14775         my $oscode;
14776         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
14777             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
14778         } else {
14779             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
14780         }
14781         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
14782         {
14783             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
14784         }
14785     }
14786     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
14787         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
14788
14789         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
14790         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
14791
14792         my $cpath = $component->{path};
14793         for my $path (@paths) {
14794             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
14795                 push(@paths, $cpath);
14796             }
14797         }
14798     }
14799     return @paths;
14800 }
14801 </pre>
14802
14803 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
14804 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
14805 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
14806 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
14807 outdated.</p>
14808
14809       </div>
14810       <div class="tags">
14811
14812
14813         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>.
14814
14815
14816       </div>
14817     </div>
14818     <div class="padding"></div>
14819
14820     <div class="entry">
14821       <div class="title">
14822         <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>
14823       </div>
14824       <div class="date">
14825          7th October 2011
14826       </div>
14827       <div class="body">
14828         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
14829 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
14830 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
14831 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
14832 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
14833 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
14834 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
14835 models.</p>
14836
14837 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
14838 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
14839 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
14840 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
14841
14842 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
14843 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
14844 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
14845 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
14846 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
14847 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
14848 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
14849 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
14850 distributed.</p>
14851
14852 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
14853
14854 <ul>
14855
14856 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
14857   other relevant equipment.</li>
14858
14859 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
14860
14861 </ul>
14862
14863 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
14864 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
14865 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
14866 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
14867 books available.</p>
14868
14869 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
14870 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
14871 libraries. :)</p>
14872
14873       </div>
14874       <div class="tags">
14875
14876
14877         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>.
14878
14879
14880       </div>
14881     </div>
14882     <div class="padding"></div>
14883
14884     <div class="entry">
14885       <div class="title">
14886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
14887       </div>
14888       <div class="date">
14889         17th September 2011
14890       </div>
14891       <div class="body">
14892         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
14893 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
14894 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
14895 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
14896 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
14897 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
14898 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
14899 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
14900
14901 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
14902
14903 <blockquote><pre>
14904 #!/bin/sh
14905 # apt-get install lsdvd
14906 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14907 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
14908 </pre></blockquote>
14909
14910 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
14911 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
14912 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
14913 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
14914
14915 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
14916 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
14917 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
14918 back as an ISO.
14919
14920 <blockquote><pre>
14921 #!/bin/sh
14922 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
14923 set -e
14924 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
14925 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14926 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
14927 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
14928 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
14929 </pre></blockquote>
14930
14931 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
14932
14933 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
14934 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
14935 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
14936 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
14937 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
14938
14939 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
14940 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
14941 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
14942 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
14943 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
14944 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
14945
14946       </div>
14947       <div class="tags">
14948
14949
14950         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>.
14951
14952
14953       </div>
14954     </div>
14955     <div class="padding"></div>
14956
14957     <div class="entry">
14958       <div class="title">
14959         <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>
14960       </div>
14961       <div class="date">
14962          4th August 2011
14963       </div>
14964       <div class="body">
14965         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
14966 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
14967 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
14968 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
14969 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
14970 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
14971 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
14972 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
14973 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
14974
14975 <p><blockquote>
14976 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
14977 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
14978 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
14979 </blockquote></p>
14980
14981 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
14982 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
14983 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
14984 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
14985 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
14986 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
14987 hard to explain.</p>
14988
14989 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
14990 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
14991 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
14992 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
14993 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
14994 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
14995 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
14996 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
14997 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
14998 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
14999 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
15000 mode).</p>
15001
15002 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
15003 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
15004 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
15005 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
15006 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
15007 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
15008 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
15009 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
15010 after visiting single user mode.</p>
15011
15012 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
15013 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
15014 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
15015 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
15016 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
15017 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
15018 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
15019 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
15020
15021 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
15022 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
15023 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
15024
15025       </div>
15026       <div class="tags">
15027
15028
15029         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>.
15030
15031
15032       </div>
15033     </div>
15034     <div class="padding"></div>
15035
15036     <div class="entry">
15037       <div class="title">
15038         <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>
15039       </div>
15040       <div class="date">
15041         30th July 2011
15042       </div>
15043       <div class="body">
15044         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
15045 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
15046 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
15047 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
15048 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
15049 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
15050 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
15051 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
15052 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
15053 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
15054 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
15055 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
15056 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
15057
15058 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
15059 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
15060 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
15061 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
15062 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
15063 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
15064 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
15065 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
15066 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
15067
15068 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
15069 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
15070 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
15071 is presented.</p>
15072
15073 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
15074 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
15075 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
15076 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
15077 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
15078 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
15079 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
15080 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
15081 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
15082 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
15083 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
15084 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
15085 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
15086 find time to push this forward.</p>
15087
15088       </div>
15089       <div class="tags">
15090
15091
15092         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>.
15093
15094
15095       </div>
15096     </div>
15097     <div class="padding"></div>
15098
15099     <div class="entry">
15100       <div class="title">
15101         <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>
15102       </div>
15103       <div class="date">
15104         29th July 2011
15105       </div>
15106       <div class="body">
15107         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
15108 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
15109 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
15110 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
15111 issues.</p>
15112
15113 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
15114 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
15115 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
15116
15117 <ol>
15118
15119 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
15120 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
15121 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
15122 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
15123 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
15124 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
15125 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
15126 Debian.</li>
15127
15128 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
15129 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
15130 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
15131 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
15132 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
15133 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
15134 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
15135 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
15136 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
15137 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
15138 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
15139 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
15140 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
15141
15142 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
15143 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
15144 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
15145 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
15146 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
15147 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
15148 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
15149 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
15150 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
15151 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
15152
15153 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
15154 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
15155 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
15156 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
15157 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
15158 latter behaviour.</li>
15159
15160 </ol>
15161
15162 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
15163 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
15164 it do not matter much.</p>
15165
15166 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
15167 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
15168 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
15169
15170       </div>
15171       <div class="tags">
15172
15173
15174         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>.
15175
15176
15177       </div>
15178     </div>
15179     <div class="padding"></div>
15180
15181     <div class="entry">
15182       <div class="title">
15183         <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>
15184       </div>
15185       <div class="date">
15186         26th July 2011
15187       </div>
15188       <div class="body">
15189         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
15190 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
15191 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
15192 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
15193 security support for a few years.</p>
15194
15195 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
15196 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
15197 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
15198 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
15199 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
15200 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
15201 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
15202 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
15203 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
15204 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
15205 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
15206 easier in the future.</p>
15207
15208 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
15209 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
15210 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
15211 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
15212 do not have time for.</p>
15213
15214       </div>
15215       <div class="tags">
15216
15217
15218         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>.
15219
15220
15221       </div>
15222     </div>
15223     <div class="padding"></div>
15224
15225     <div class="entry">
15226       <div class="title">
15227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
15228       </div>
15229       <div class="date">
15230         20th June 2011
15231       </div>
15232       <div class="body">
15233         <p>Reading
15234 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
15235 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
15236 parts of the
15237 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
15238 and
15239 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
15240 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
15241 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
15242 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
15243
15244       </div>
15245       <div class="tags">
15246
15247
15248         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>.
15249
15250
15251       </div>
15252     </div>
15253     <div class="padding"></div>
15254
15255     <div class="entry">
15256       <div class="title">
15257         <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>
15258       </div>
15259       <div class="date">
15260         30th April 2011
15261       </div>
15262       <div class="body">
15263         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
15264 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
15265 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
15266 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
15267 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
15268 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
15269 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
15270 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
15271 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
15272 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
15273
15274 <p>Where is it?  Visit
15275 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
15276 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
15277 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
15278 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
15279
15280       </div>
15281       <div class="tags">
15282
15283
15284         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>.
15285
15286
15287       </div>
15288     </div>
15289     <div class="padding"></div>
15290
15291     <div class="entry">
15292       <div class="title">
15293         <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>
15294       </div>
15295       <div class="date">
15296         29th April 2011
15297       </div>
15298       <div class="body">
15299         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
15300 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
15301 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
15302 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
15303 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
15304 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
15305 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
15306 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
15307 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
15308 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
15309 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
15310 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
15311 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
15312
15313 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
15314 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
15315 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
15316 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
15317 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
15318 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
15319 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
15320 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
15321 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
15322 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
15323 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
15324 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
15325 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
15326
15327 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
15328 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
15329 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
15330 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
15331 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
15332 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
15333 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
15334 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
15335 it.</p>
15336
15337 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
15338 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
15339 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
15340 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
15341 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
15342 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
15343 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
15344
15345 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
15346 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
15347 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
15348 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
15349 and range= options.</p>
15350
15351 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
15352 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
15353 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
15354 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
15355 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
15356 to best handle this.  I've noticed
15357 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
15358 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
15359 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
15360 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
15361
15362 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
15363 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
15364 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
15365 discussions instead of only
15366 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
15367 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
15368 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
15369 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
15370 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
15371 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
15372
15373       </div>
15374       <div class="tags">
15375
15376
15377         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>.
15378
15379
15380       </div>
15381     </div>
15382     <div class="padding"></div>
15383
15384     <div class="entry">
15385       <div class="title">
15386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
15387       </div>
15388       <div class="date">
15389          6th April 2011
15390       </div>
15391       <div class="body">
15392         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
15393 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
15394 A few days ago the project
15395 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
15396 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
15397 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
15398 into Gnash.</p>
15399
15400       </div>
15401       <div class="tags">
15402
15403
15404         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>.
15405
15406
15407       </div>
15408     </div>
15409     <div class="padding"></div>
15410
15411     <div class="entry">
15412       <div class="title">
15413         <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>
15414       </div>
15415       <div class="date">
15416          3rd April 2011
15417       </div>
15418       <div class="body">
15419         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
15420 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
15421 update in English.</p>
15422
15423 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
15424 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
15425 of the British service
15426 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
15427 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
15428 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
15429 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
15430 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
15431 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
15432 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
15433 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
15434 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
15435 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
15436 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
15437 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
15438 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
15439
15440 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
15441 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
15442 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
15443 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
15444 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
15445 public infrastructure.</p>
15446
15447 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
15448 such service?</p>
15449
15450       </div>
15451       <div class="tags">
15452
15453
15454         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>.
15455
15456
15457       </div>
15458     </div>
15459     <div class="padding"></div>
15460
15461     <div class="entry">
15462       <div class="title">
15463         <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>
15464       </div>
15465       <div class="date">
15466         28th January 2011
15467       </div>
15468       <div class="body">
15469         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
15470 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
15471 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
15472 available on the Internet, and check our locally
15473 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
15474 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
15475 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
15476 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
15477 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
15478 out which security holes were present in our free software
15479 collection.</p>
15480
15481 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
15482 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
15483 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
15484 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
15485 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
15486 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
15487 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
15488 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
15489 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
15490 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
15491 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
15492 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
15493 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
15494 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
15495 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
15496 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
15497
15498 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
15499 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
15500 check out, one could look up
15501 <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
15502 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
15503 The most recent one is
15504 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
15505 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
15506 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
15507
15508 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
15509 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
15510 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
15511 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
15512 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
15513 security issues out.</p>
15514
15515 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
15516 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
15517 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
15518 RHEL is providing
15519 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
15520 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
15521 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
15522
15523 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
15524 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
15525 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
15526 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
15527 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
15528 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
15529 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
15530 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
15531 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
15532 established soon.</p>
15533
15534 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
15535 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
15536 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
15537 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
15538 for their packages.</p>
15539
15540       </div>
15541       <div class="tags">
15542
15543
15544         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>.
15545
15546
15547       </div>
15548     </div>
15549     <div class="padding"></div>
15550
15551     <div class="entry">
15552       <div class="title">
15553         <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>
15554       </div>
15555       <div class="date">
15556         23rd January 2011
15557       </div>
15558       <div class="body">
15559         <p>In the
15560 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
15561 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
15562 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
15563 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
15564 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
15565 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
15566 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
15567 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
15568 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
15569 one of my machines like this:</p>
15570
15571 <pre>
15572 loaded modules:
15573 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
15574 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
15575 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
15576 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
15577 10de:03ec pata_amd
15578 10de:03f6 sata_nv
15579 1022:1103 k8temp
15580 109e:036e bttv
15581 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
15582 11ab:4364 sky2
15583 </pre>
15584
15585 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
15586 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
15587
15588 <pre>
15589 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
15590     echo loaded pci modules:
15591     (
15592         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
15593         for address in * ; do
15594             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15595                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15596                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15597                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15598                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
15599                     echo "$id $module"
15600                 fi
15601             fi
15602         done
15603     )
15604     echo
15605 fi
15606 </pre>
15607
15608 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
15609 mappings:</p>
15610
15611 <pre>
15612 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
15613     echo loaded usb modules:
15614     (
15615         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
15616         for address in * ; do
15617             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15618                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15619                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15620                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15621                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
15622                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
15623                         echo "$id $module"
15624                     fi
15625                 fi
15626             fi
15627         done
15628     )
15629     echo
15630 fi
15631 </pre>
15632
15633 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
15634 well.</p>
15635
15636       </div>
15637       <div class="tags">
15638
15639
15640         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>.
15641
15642
15643       </div>
15644     </div>
15645     <div class="padding"></div>
15646
15647     <div class="entry">
15648       <div class="title">
15649         <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>
15650       </div>
15651       <div class="date">
15652         16th January 2011
15653       </div>
15654       <div class="body">
15655         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
15656 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
15657 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
15658 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
15659 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
15660 the Wikipedia article on
15661 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
15662 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
15663 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
15664 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
15665 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
15666 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
15667 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
15668 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
15669 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
15670 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
15671 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
15672 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
15673
15674 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
15675 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
15676 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
15677 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
15678 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
15679 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
15680 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
15681 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
15682 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
15683 from last week</a>.</p>
15684
15685 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
15686 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
15687 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
15688 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
15689 was without royalties and license terms, check out
15690 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15691 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
15692
15693 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
15694 available from
15695 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
15696 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
15697 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
15698
15699 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
15700 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
15701 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
15702 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
15703
15704       </div>
15705       <div class="tags">
15706
15707
15708         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>.
15709
15710
15711       </div>
15712     </div>
15713     <div class="padding"></div>
15714
15715     <div class="entry">
15716       <div class="title">
15717         <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>
15718       </div>
15719       <div class="date">
15720         12th January 2011
15721       </div>
15722       <div class="body">
15723         <p>Today I discovered
15724 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
15725 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
15726 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
15727 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
15728 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
15729 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
15730 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
15731 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15732 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
15733 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
15734 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
15735 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
15736 on the Google announcement is available from
15737 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
15738 A good read. :)</p>
15739
15740 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
15741 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
15742 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
15743 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
15744 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
15745 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
15746 browsers support H.264, and others support
15747 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
15748 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
15749 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
15750 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
15751 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
15752 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
15753 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
15754 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
15755
15756 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
15757 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
15758 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
15759 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
15760 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
15761 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
15762 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
15763
15764 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
15765 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
15766 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
15767 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
15768 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
15769 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
15770 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
15771
15772 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
15773 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
15774 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
15775 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
15776 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
15777 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
15778 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
15779
15780 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
15781 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
15782 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
15783 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
15784 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
15785 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
15786 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
15787 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
15788 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
15789 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
15790 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
15791 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
15792 I guess time will tell.</p>
15793
15794 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
15795 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
15796 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
15797
15798       </div>
15799       <div class="tags">
15800
15801
15802         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>.
15803
15804
15805       </div>
15806     </div>
15807     <div class="padding"></div>
15808
15809     <div class="entry">
15810       <div class="title">
15811         <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>
15812       </div>
15813       <div class="date">
15814         30th December 2010
15815       </div>
15816       <div class="body">
15817         <p>After trying to
15818 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
15819 Ogg Theora</a> to
15820 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
15821 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
15822 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
15823 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
15824 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
15825 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
15826 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
15827
15828 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
15829 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
15830 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
15831 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
15832 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
15833 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
15834 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
15835
15836 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
15837 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
15838
15839       </div>
15840       <div class="tags">
15841
15842
15843         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>.
15844
15845
15846       </div>
15847     </div>
15848     <div class="padding"></div>
15849
15850     <div class="entry">
15851       <div class="title">
15852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
15853       </div>
15854       <div class="date">
15855         27th December 2010
15856       </div>
15857       <div class="body">
15858         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
15859 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
15860 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
15861 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
15862 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
15863 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
15864 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
15865 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
15866
15867 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
15868 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
15869 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
15870 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
15871 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
15872 page</a>.</p>
15873
15874 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
15875 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
15876 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
15877 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
15878 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
15879 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
15880 specification on equal terms.</p>
15881
15882 <blockquote>
15883
15884 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
15885 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
15886 open standard:</p>
15887
15888 <ul>
15889
15890 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15891 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15892 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
15893 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
15894
15895 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15896 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
15897 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
15898 nominal fee.</li>
15899
15900 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
15901 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
15902 free basis.</li>
15903
15904 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15905
15906 </ul>
15907 </blockquote>
15908
15909 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
15910 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
15911 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
15912 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
15913 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
15914 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
15915 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
15916
15917 <blockquote>
15918
15919 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
15920
15921 <ol>
15922
15923 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
15924 tilgængelig.</li>
15925
15926 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
15927 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
15928
15929 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
15930 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
15931
15932 </ol>
15933
15934 </blockquote>
15935
15936 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
15937 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
15938
15939 <blockquote>
15940
15941 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
15942
15943 <ol>
15944
15945 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
15946 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
15947
15948 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
15949 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
15950 Standard themselves;</li>
15951
15952 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
15953 any party or in any business model;</li>
15954
15955 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
15956 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
15957 parties;</li>
15958
15959 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
15960 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
15961 parties.</li>
15962
15963 </ol>
15964
15965 </blockquote>
15966
15967 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
15968 its
15969 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
15970 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
15971
15972 <blockquote>
15973 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
15974
15975 <ul>
15976
15977 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
15978   democratic:
15979
15980          <ul>
15981
15982          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
15983             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
15984             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
15985             and managed.</li>
15986
15987          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
15988             method, can be changed through input from all
15989             participants.</li>
15990
15991          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
15992             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
15993
15994          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
15995             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
15996
15997          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
15998             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
15999             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
16000
16001          </ul>
16002
16003 </li>
16004
16005 </ul>
16006
16007 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
16008 <ul>
16009
16010 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
16011   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
16012   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
16013   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
16014   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
16015
16016 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
16017   a technical or economic barriers</li>
16018
16019 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
16020   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
16021   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
16022   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
16023   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
16024   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
16025   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
16026   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
16027   intended to function.</li>
16028
16029 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
16030   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
16031   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
16032
16033 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
16034   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
16035   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
16036   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
16037   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
16038   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
16039   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
16040   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
16041
16042       <ul>
16043
16044       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
16045         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
16046         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
16047
16048       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
16049         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
16050         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
16051         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
16052
16053       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
16054         licensor</li>
16055
16056       </ul>
16057 </li>
16058
16059 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
16060   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
16061   or restricted licensing terms</li>
16062
16063 </ul>
16064
16065 </blockquote>
16066
16067 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
16068 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
16069 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
16070 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
16071 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
16072 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
16073 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
16074 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
16075 Standards.</p>
16076
16077       </div>
16078       <div class="tags">
16079
16080
16081         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>.
16082
16083
16084       </div>
16085     </div>
16086     <div class="padding"></div>
16087
16088     <div class="entry">
16089       <div class="title">
16090         <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>
16091       </div>
16092       <div class="date">
16093         25th December 2010
16094       </div>
16095       <div class="body">
16096         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
16097 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
16098
16099 <blockquote>
16100
16101 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
16102 as follows:</p>
16103
16104 <ol>
16105
16106 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
16107 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
16108 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
16109
16110 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16111 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
16112 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
16113 parties.</li>
16114
16115 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
16116 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
16117 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
16118
16119 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
16120 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
16121
16122 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
16123
16124 </ol>
16125
16126 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
16127 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
16128 products based on the standard.</p>
16129 </blockquote>
16130
16131 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
16132 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
16133 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
16134 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
16135 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
16136 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
16137 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
16138 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
16139
16140 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
16141
16142 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
16143 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
16144 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
16145 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
16146 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
16147 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
16148 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
16149 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
16150 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
16151 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
16152 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
16153 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
16154 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
16155 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
16156
16157 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
16158
16159 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
16160 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
16161 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
16162 documentation indicating this.</p>
16163
16164 <p>According to
16165 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
16166 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
16167 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
16168 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
16169 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
16170 report is correct.</p>
16171
16172 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
16173
16174 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
16175 container format</a> and both the
16176 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
16177 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
16178 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
16179
16180 <blockquote>
16181
16182 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
16183 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
16184 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
16185 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
16186 specification compliance.
16187
16188 </blockquote>
16189
16190 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
16191 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
16192 this is the term:<p>
16193
16194 <blockquote>
16195
16196 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
16197 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
16198 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
16199 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
16200 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
16201 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
16202 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
16203 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
16204 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
16205 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
16206 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
16207 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
16208
16209 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
16210 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
16211 </blockquote>
16212
16213 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
16214 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
16215 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
16216 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
16217 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
16218
16219 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
16220
16221 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
16222 Theora format.
16223 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
16224 and
16225 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
16226 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
16227 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
16228 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
16229 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
16230 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
16231 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
16232 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
16233
16234 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
16235
16236 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
16237
16238 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
16239
16240 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
16241 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
16242 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
16243 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
16244 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
16245 this.</p>
16246
16247 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
16248 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
16249
16250       </div>
16251       <div class="tags">
16252
16253
16254         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>.
16255
16256
16257       </div>
16258     </div>
16259     <div class="padding"></div>
16260
16261     <div class="entry">
16262       <div class="title">
16263         <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>
16264       </div>
16265       <div class="date">
16266         25th December 2010
16267       </div>
16268       <div class="body">
16269         <p>A few days ago
16270 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
16271 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
16272 2.0 of
16273 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
16274 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
16275 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
16276 Nothing very surprising there, given
16277 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
16278 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
16279 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
16280 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
16281 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
16282 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
16283 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
16284 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
16285 standard definition from its content.</p>
16286
16287 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
16288 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
16289 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
16290 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
16291 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
16292 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
16293 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
16294 background information about that story is available in
16295 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
16296 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
16297
16298 <blockquote>
16299 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
16300 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
16301 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
16302
16303 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
16304
16305 <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>
16306
16307 <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>
16308
16309 <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>
16310
16311 <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>
16312
16313 <p>
16314 <ul>
16315 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
16316 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
16317 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
16318 </ul>
16319 </p>
16320
16321 <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>
16322
16323 <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>
16324
16325 <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>
16326
16327 <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>
16328
16329 <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>
16330
16331
16332 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
16333 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
16334 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
16335 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
16336 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
16337 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
16338
16339 </p>
16340
16341 <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>
16342
16343 <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>
16344
16345 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
16346
16347 <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>
16348
16349 <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>
16350
16351 <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>
16352
16353 <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>
16354
16355 <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>
16356
16357 <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>
16358
16359 <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>
16360
16361 <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>
16362
16363 <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>
16364
16365 <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>
16366
16367 <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>
16368
16369 <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>
16370
16371 <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>
16372
16373 <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>
16374
16375 <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>
16376
16377 <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>
16378
16379 <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>
16380
16381 <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>
16382
16383 <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>
16384
16385 <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>
16386
16387 <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>
16388
16389 <p>On security:</p>
16390
16391 <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>
16392
16393 <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>
16394
16395 <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>
16396
16397 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
16398
16399 <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>
16400
16401 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
16402
16403 <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>
16404
16405 <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>
16406
16407 <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>
16408
16409 <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>
16410
16411 <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>
16412
16413 <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>
16414
16415 <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>
16416
16417 <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>
16418
16419 <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>
16420
16421 <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>
16422
16423 <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>
16424
16425 <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>
16426
16427 <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>
16428
16429 <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>
16430
16431 <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>
16432
16433 <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>
16434
16435 <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>
16436
16437 <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>
16438
16439 <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>
16440
16441 <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>
16442
16443 <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>
16444
16445 <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>
16446
16447 <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>
16448
16449 <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>
16450
16451 <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>
16452
16453 <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>
16454
16455 <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>
16456
16457 <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>
16458
16459 <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>
16460
16461 <p>Cordially,<br>
16462 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
16463 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
16464 </blockquote>
16465
16466       </div>
16467       <div class="tags">
16468
16469
16470         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>.
16471
16472
16473       </div>
16474     </div>
16475     <div class="padding"></div>
16476
16477     <div class="entry">
16478       <div class="title">
16479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
16480       </div>
16481       <div class="date">
16482         25th December 2010
16483       </div>
16484       <div class="body">
16485         <p>Half a year ago I
16486 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
16487 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
16488 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
16489 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
16490
16491 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
16492 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
16493 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
16494 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
16495 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
16496 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
16497 got such a great test tool available.</p>
16498
16499       </div>
16500       <div class="tags">
16501
16502
16503         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>.
16504
16505
16506       </div>
16507     </div>
16508     <div class="padding"></div>
16509
16510     <div class="entry">
16511       <div class="title">
16512         <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>
16513       </div>
16514       <div class="date">
16515         22nd December 2010
16516       </div>
16517       <div class="body">
16518         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
16519 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
16520 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
16521 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
16522 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
16523 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
16524 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
16525 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
16526 university.</p>
16527
16528 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
16529 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
16530 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
16531 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
16532 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
16533 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
16534 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
16535 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
16536
16537 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
16538 I perform on a new model.</p>
16539
16540 <ul>
16541
16542 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
16543 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
16544 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
16545
16546 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
16547 installation, X.org is working.</li>
16548
16549 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
16550 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
16551 reported by the program.</li>
16552
16553 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
16554 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
16555 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
16556 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
16557 normally test this by playing
16558 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
16559 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
16560
16561 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
16562 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16563
16564 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
16565 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16566
16567 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
16568 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
16569
16570 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
16571 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
16572 few.</li>
16573
16574 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
16575 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
16576 notice this.</li>
16577
16578 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
16579 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
16580 resume.</li>
16581
16582 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
16583 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
16584 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
16585 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
16586 not.</li>
16587
16588 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
16589 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
16590 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
16591 existence.</li>
16592
16593 </ul>
16594
16595 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
16596 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
16597 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
16598 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
16599 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
16600 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
16601 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
16602 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
16603
16604       </div>
16605       <div class="tags">
16606
16607
16608         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>.
16609
16610
16611       </div>
16612     </div>
16613     <div class="padding"></div>
16614
16615     <div class="entry">
16616       <div class="title">
16617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
16618       </div>
16619       <div class="date">
16620         11th December 2010
16621       </div>
16622       <div class="body">
16623         <p>As I continue to explore
16624 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
16625 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
16626 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
16627
16628 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
16629 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
16630 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
16631 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
16632 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
16633 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
16634 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
16635 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
16636 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
16637 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
16638 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
16639 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
16640 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
16641 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
16642 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
16643 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
16644 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
16645 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
16646 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
16647 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
16648
16649 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
16650 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
16651 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
16652 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
16653 If the Skolelinux foundation
16654 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
16655 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
16656 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
16657 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
16658 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
16659 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
16660 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
16661 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
16662
16663 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
16664 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
16665 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
16666 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
16667 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
16668 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
16669 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
16670 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
16671 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
16672 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
16673 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
16674 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
16675 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
16676 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
16677 currencies.</p>
16678
16679 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
16680 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
16681 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
16682 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
16683 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
16684 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
16685 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
16686 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
16687 BitCoins.  Check out
16688 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
16689 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
16690 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
16691 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
16692 yet.</p>
16693
16694 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
16695 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
16696 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
16697 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
16698 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
16699
16700       </div>
16701       <div class="tags">
16702
16703
16704         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>.
16705
16706
16707       </div>
16708     </div>
16709     <div class="padding"></div>
16710
16711     <div class="entry">
16712       <div class="title">
16713         <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>
16714       </div>
16715       <div class="date">
16716         10th December 2010
16717       </div>
16718       <div class="body">
16719         <p>With this weeks lawless
16720 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
16721 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
16722 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
16723 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
16724 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
16725 A blog post from
16726 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
16727 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
16728 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
16729 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
16730 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
16731 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
16732 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
16733
16734 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
16735 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
16736 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
16737 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
16738 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
16739 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
16740 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
16741 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
16742 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
16743 Debian</a> soon.</p>
16744
16745 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
16746 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
16747 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
16748 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
16749 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
16750 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
16751 you can even get
16752 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
16753 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
16754 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
16755 on the current exchange rates.</p>
16756
16757 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
16758 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
16759 donations to the address
16760 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
16761
16762       </div>
16763       <div class="tags">
16764
16765
16766         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>.
16767
16768
16769       </div>
16770     </div>
16771     <div class="padding"></div>
16772
16773     <div class="entry">
16774       <div class="title">
16775         <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>
16776       </div>
16777       <div class="date">
16778          9th December 2010
16779       </div>
16780       <div class="body">
16781         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
16782 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
16783 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
16784 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
16785 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
16786 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
16787 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
16788 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
16789 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
16790 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
16791 operational.</p>
16792
16793 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
16794 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
16795 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
16796 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
16797 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
16798 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
16799 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
16800
16801       </div>
16802       <div class="tags">
16803
16804
16805         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>.
16806
16807
16808       </div>
16809     </div>
16810     <div class="padding"></div>
16811
16812     <div class="entry">
16813       <div class="title">
16814         <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>
16815       </div>
16816       <div class="date">
16817         29th November 2010
16818       </div>
16819       <div class="body">
16820         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
16821 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
16822 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
16823 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
16824 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
16825 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
16826
16827 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
16828 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
16829 will hold its
16830 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
16831 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
16832 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
16833 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
16834 vote this year.</p>
16835
16836       </div>
16837       <div class="tags">
16838
16839
16840         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>.
16841
16842
16843       </div>
16844     </div>
16845     <div class="padding"></div>
16846
16847     <div class="entry">
16848       <div class="title">
16849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
16850       </div>
16851       <div class="date">
16852         27th November 2010
16853       </div>
16854       <div class="body">
16855         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
16856 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
16857 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
16858 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
16859 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
16860 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
16861 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
16862 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
16863
16864 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
16865 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
16866 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
16867 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
16868 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
16869 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
16870 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
16871 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
16872 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
16873 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
16874 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
16875
16876 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
16877 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
16878 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
16879 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
16880 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
16881 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
16882 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
16883 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
16884 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
16885 what is going on.</p>
16886
16887       </div>
16888       <div class="tags">
16889
16890
16891         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>.
16892
16893
16894       </div>
16895     </div>
16896     <div class="padding"></div>
16897
16898     <div class="entry">
16899       <div class="title">
16900         <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>
16901       </div>
16902       <div class="date">
16903         22nd November 2010
16904       </div>
16905       <div class="body">
16906         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
16907 upgrade testing of the
16908 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16909 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
16910 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
16911 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
16912
16913 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16914
16915 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16916
16917 <blockquote><p>
16918   apache2.2-bin
16919   aptdaemon
16920   baobab
16921   binfmt-support
16922   browser-plugin-gnash
16923   cheese-common
16924   cli-common
16925   cups-pk-helper
16926   dmz-cursor-theme
16927   empathy
16928   empathy-common
16929   freedesktop-sound-theme
16930   freeglut3
16931   gconf-defaults-service
16932   gdm-themes
16933   gedit-plugins
16934   geoclue
16935   geoclue-hostip
16936   geoclue-localnet
16937   geoclue-manual
16938   geoclue-yahoo
16939   gnash
16940   gnash-common
16941   gnome
16942   gnome-backgrounds
16943   gnome-cards-data
16944   gnome-codec-install
16945   gnome-core
16946   gnome-desktop-environment
16947   gnome-disk-utility
16948   gnome-screenshot
16949   gnome-search-tool
16950   gnome-session-canberra
16951   gnome-system-log
16952   gnome-themes-extras
16953   gnome-themes-more
16954   gnome-user-share
16955   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16956   gstreamer0.10-tools
16957   gtk2-engines
16958   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16959   gtk2-engines-smooth
16960   hamster-applet
16961   libapache2-mod-dnssd
16962   libapr1
16963   libaprutil1
16964   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
16965   libaprutil1-ldap
16966   libart2.0-cil
16967   libboost-date-time1.42.0
16968   libboost-python1.42.0
16969   libboost-thread1.42.0
16970   libchamplain-0.4-0
16971   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
16972   libcheese-gtk18
16973   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16974   libcryptui0
16975   libdiscid0
16976   libelf1
16977   libepc-1.0-2
16978   libepc-common
16979   libepc-ui-1.0-2
16980   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16981   libfreerdp0
16982   libgconf2.0-cil
16983   libgdata-common
16984   libgdata7
16985   libgdu-gtk0
16986   libgee2
16987   libgeoclue0
16988   libgexiv2-0
16989   libgif4
16990   libglade2.0-cil
16991   libglib2.0-cil
16992   libgmime2.4-cil
16993   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16994   libgnome2.24-cil
16995   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
16996   libgpod-common
16997   libgpod4
16998   libgtk2.0-cil
16999   libgtkglext1
17000   libgtksourceview2.0-common
17001   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17002   libmono-addins0.2-cil
17003   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
17004   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17005   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
17006   libmono-posix2.0-cil
17007   libmono-security2.0-cil
17008   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17009   libmono-system2.0-cil
17010   libmtp8
17011   libmusicbrainz3-6
17012   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
17013   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
17014   libopal3.6.8
17015   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
17016   libpt2.6.7
17017   libpython2.6
17018   librpm1
17019   librpmio1
17020   libsdl1.2debian
17021   libsrtp0
17022   libssh-4
17023   libtelepathy-farsight0
17024   libtelepathy-glib0
17025   libtidy-0.99-0
17026   media-player-info
17027   mesa-utils
17028   mono-2.0-gac
17029   mono-gac
17030   mono-runtime
17031   nautilus-sendto
17032   nautilus-sendto-empathy
17033   p7zip-full
17034   pkg-config
17035   python-aptdaemon
17036   python-aptdaemon-gtk
17037   python-axiom
17038   python-beautifulsoup
17039   python-bugbuddy
17040   python-clientform
17041   python-coherence
17042   python-configobj
17043   python-crypto
17044   python-cupshelpers
17045   python-elementtree
17046   python-epsilon
17047   python-evolution
17048   python-feedparser
17049   python-gdata
17050   python-gdbm
17051   python-gst0.10
17052   python-gtkglext1
17053   python-gtksourceview2
17054   python-httplib2
17055   python-louie
17056   python-mako
17057   python-markupsafe
17058   python-mechanize
17059   python-nevow
17060   python-notify
17061   python-opengl
17062   python-openssl
17063   python-pam
17064   python-pkg-resources
17065   python-pyasn1
17066   python-pysqlite2
17067   python-rdflib
17068   python-serial
17069   python-tagpy
17070   python-twisted-bin
17071   python-twisted-conch
17072   python-twisted-core
17073   python-twisted-web
17074   python-utidylib
17075   python-webkit
17076   python-xdg
17077   python-zope.interface
17078   remmina
17079   remmina-plugin-data
17080   remmina-plugin-rdp
17081   remmina-plugin-vnc
17082   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17083   rhythmbox-plugins
17084   rpm-common
17085   rpm2cpio
17086   seahorse-plugins
17087   shotwell
17088   software-center
17089   system-config-printer-udev
17090   telepathy-gabble
17091   telepathy-mission-control-5
17092   telepathy-salut
17093   tomboy
17094   totem
17095   totem-coherence
17096   totem-mozilla
17097   totem-plugins
17098   transmission-common
17099   xdg-user-dirs
17100   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
17101   xserver-xephyr
17102 </p></blockquote>
17103
17104 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17105
17106 <blockquote><p>
17107   cheese
17108   ekiga
17109   eog
17110   epiphany-extensions
17111   evolution-exchange
17112   fast-user-switch-applet
17113   file-roller
17114   gcalctool
17115   gconf-editor
17116   gdm
17117   gedit
17118   gedit-common
17119   gnome-games
17120   gnome-games-data
17121   gnome-nettool
17122   gnome-system-tools
17123   gnome-themes
17124   gnuchess
17125   gucharmap
17126   guile-1.8-libs
17127   libavahi-ui0
17128   libdmx1
17129   libgalago3
17130   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17131   libgtksourceview2.0-0
17132   liblircclient0
17133   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
17134   libspeexdsp1
17135   libsvga1
17136   rhythmbox
17137   seahorse
17138   sound-juicer
17139   system-config-printer
17140   totem-common
17141   transmission-gtk
17142   vinagre
17143   vino
17144 </p></blockquote>
17145
17146 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17147
17148 <blockquote><p>
17149   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17150 </p></blockquote>
17151
17152 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17153
17154 <blockquote><p>
17155 [nothing]
17156 </p></blockquote>
17157
17158 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17159
17160 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17161
17162 <blockquote><p>
17163   ksmserver
17164 </p></blockquote>
17165
17166 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17167
17168 <blockquote><p>
17169   kwin
17170   network-manager-kde
17171 </p></blockquote>
17172
17173 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17174
17175 <blockquote><p>
17176   arts
17177   dolphin
17178   freespacenotifier
17179   google-gadgets-gst
17180   google-gadgets-xul
17181   kappfinder
17182   kcalc
17183   kcharselect
17184   kde-core
17185   kde-plasma-desktop
17186   kde-standard
17187   kde-window-manager
17188   kdeartwork
17189   kdeartwork-emoticons
17190   kdeartwork-style
17191   kdeartwork-theme-icon
17192   kdebase
17193   kdebase-apps
17194   kdebase-workspace
17195   kdebase-workspace-bin
17196   kdebase-workspace-data
17197   kdeeject
17198   kdelibs
17199   kdeplasma-addons
17200   kdeutils
17201   kdewallpapers
17202   kdf
17203   kfloppy
17204   kgpg
17205   khelpcenter4
17206   kinfocenter
17207   konq-plugins-l10n
17208   konqueror-nsplugins
17209   kscreensaver
17210   kscreensaver-xsavers
17211   ktimer
17212   kwrite
17213   libgle3
17214   libkde4-ruby1.8
17215   libkonq5
17216   libkonq5-templates
17217   libnetpbm10
17218   libplasma-ruby
17219   libplasma-ruby1.8
17220   libqt4-ruby1.8
17221   marble-data
17222   marble-plugins
17223   netpbm
17224   nuvola-icon-theme
17225   plasma-dataengines-workspace
17226   plasma-desktop
17227   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
17228   plasma-runners-addons
17229   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
17230   plasma-scriptengine-python
17231   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
17232   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
17233   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
17234   plasma-scriptengines
17235   plasma-wallpapers-addons
17236   plasma-widget-folderview
17237   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17238   ruby
17239   sweeper
17240   update-notifier-kde
17241   xscreensaver-data-extra
17242   xscreensaver-gl
17243   xscreensaver-gl-extra
17244   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17245 </p></blockquote>
17246
17247 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17248
17249 <blockquote><p>
17250   ark
17251   google-gadgets-common
17252   google-gadgets-qt
17253   htdig
17254   kate
17255   kdebase-bin
17256   kdebase-data
17257   kdepasswd
17258   kfind
17259   klipper
17260   konq-plugins
17261   konqueror
17262   ksysguard
17263   ksysguardd
17264   libarchive1
17265   libcln6
17266   libeet1
17267   libeina-svn-06
17268   libggadget-1.0-0b
17269   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
17270   libgps19
17271   libkdecorations4
17272   libkephal4
17273   libkonq4
17274   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
17275   libkscreensaver5
17276   libksgrd4
17277   libksignalplotter4
17278   libkunitconversion4
17279   libkwineffects1a
17280   libmarblewidget4
17281   libntrack-qt4-1
17282   libntrack0
17283   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
17284   libplasmaclock4a
17285   libplasmagenericshell4
17286   libprocesscore4a
17287   libprocessui4a
17288   libqalculate5
17289   libqedje0a
17290   libqtruby4shared2
17291   libqzion0a
17292   libruby1.8
17293   libscim8c2a
17294   libsmokekdecore4-3
17295   libsmokekdeui4-3
17296   libsmokekfile3
17297   libsmokekhtml3
17298   libsmokekio3
17299   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
17300   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
17301   libsmokekparts3
17302   libsmokektexteditor3
17303   libsmokekutils3
17304   libsmokenepomuk3
17305   libsmokephonon3
17306   libsmokeplasma3
17307   libsmokeqtcore4-3
17308   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
17309   libsmokeqtgui4-3
17310   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
17311   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
17312   libsmokeqtscript4-3
17313   libsmokeqtsql4-3
17314   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
17315   libsmokeqttest4-3
17316   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
17317   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
17318   libsmokeqtxml4-3
17319   libsmokesolid3
17320   libsmokesoprano3
17321   libtaskmanager4a
17322   libtidy-0.99-0
17323   libweather-ion4a
17324   libxklavier16
17325   libxxf86misc1
17326   okteta
17327   oxygencursors
17328   plasma-dataengines-addons
17329   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
17330   plasma-widget-lancelot
17331   plasma-widgets-addons
17332   plasma-widgets-workspace
17333   polkit-kde-1
17334   ruby1.8
17335   systemsettings
17336   update-notifier-common
17337 </p></blockquote>
17338
17339 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
17340 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
17341 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
17342 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
17343
17344       </div>
17345       <div class="tags">
17346
17347
17348         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>.
17349
17350
17351       </div>
17352     </div>
17353     <div class="padding"></div>
17354
17355     <div class="entry">
17356       <div class="title">
17357         <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>
17358       </div>
17359       <div class="date">
17360         22nd November 2010
17361       </div>
17362       <div class="body">
17363         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
17364 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
17365 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
17366 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
17367 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
17368 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
17369 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
17370 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
17371 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
17372
17373 <p>I found
17374 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
17375 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
17376 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
17377 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
17378 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
17379 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
17380
17381 <pre>
17382 #!/bin/sh
17383
17384 # Based on
17385 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
17386
17387 set -e
17388 set -x
17389
17390 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
17391     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
17392     exit 1
17393 else
17394     host="$1"
17395 fi
17396
17397 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
17398     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
17399     exit 1
17400 fi
17401
17402 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
17403 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
17404 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
17405 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
17406
17407 img=$host.img
17408 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
17409 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
17410
17411 parted $img mklabel msdos
17412 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
17413 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
17414 parted $img set 1 boot on
17415
17416 modprobe dm-mod
17417 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
17418 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
17419
17420 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
17421 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
17422 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
17423
17424 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
17425 losetup -d /dev/loop0
17426 </pre>
17427
17428 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
17429 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
17430
17431 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
17432 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
17433 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
17434 seem to work just fine.</p>
17435
17436       </div>
17437       <div class="tags">
17438
17439
17440         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>.
17441
17442
17443       </div>
17444     </div>
17445     <div class="padding"></div>
17446
17447     <div class="entry">
17448       <div class="title">
17449         <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>
17450       </div>
17451       <div class="date">
17452         20th November 2010
17453       </div>
17454       <div class="body">
17455         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
17456 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
17457 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
17458 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
17459
17460 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
17461 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
17462 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
17463
17464 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
17465
17466 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17467
17468 <blockquote><p>
17469   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
17470   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
17471   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
17472   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
17473   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
17474   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
17475   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
17476   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
17477   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
17478   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
17479   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
17480   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
17481   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
17482   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
17483   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
17484   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
17485   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
17486   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
17487   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
17488   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
17489   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
17490   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
17491   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
17492   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
17493   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
17494   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17495   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17496   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
17497   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17498   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
17499   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
17500   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
17501   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
17502   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
17503   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
17504   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
17505   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
17506   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
17507   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
17508   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
17509   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
17510   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
17511   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
17512   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
17513   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
17514   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
17515   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
17516   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
17517   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
17518   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
17519   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
17520   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
17521   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17522   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
17523   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
17524   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
17525   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
17526   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
17527   zip
17528 </p></blockquote>
17529
17530 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
17531
17532 <blockquote><p>
17533   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
17534   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
17535   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
17536   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
17537   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
17538   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
17539   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
17540   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
17541   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
17542   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
17543   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
17544   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17545   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17546   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17547   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17548   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
17549   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17550   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
17551   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
17552   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
17553   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
17554   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
17555   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17556   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
17557   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
17558   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
17559   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
17560   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
17561   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
17562 </p></blockquote>
17563
17564 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17565
17566 <blockquote><p>
17567   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17568 </p></blockquote>
17569
17570 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17571
17572 <blockquote><p>
17573 [nothing]
17574 </p></blockquote>
17575
17576 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17577
17578 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17579
17580 <blockquote><p>
17581   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
17582   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17583   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
17584   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
17585   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
17586   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
17587   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17588   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
17589   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
17590   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17591   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
17592   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
17593   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
17594   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
17595   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
17596   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
17597   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
17598   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
17599   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
17600   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
17601   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
17602   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
17603   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
17604   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
17605   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
17606   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
17607   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
17608   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
17609   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
17610   ttf-sazanami-gothic
17611 </p></blockquote>
17612
17613 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17614
17615 <blockquote><p>
17616   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
17617   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
17618   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
17619   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
17620   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
17621   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
17622   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
17623   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
17624   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
17625   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
17626   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
17627   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
17628   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
17629   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
17630   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17631   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17632   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
17633   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
17634   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17635   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
17636   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17637   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
17638   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17639   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17640   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
17641   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
17642   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
17643   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
17644   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
17645   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
17646   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
17647   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
17648   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
17649 </p></blockquote>
17650
17651 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17652
17653 <blockquote><p>
17654   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
17655   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
17656   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
17657   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
17658   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17659   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
17660   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17661 </p></blockquote>
17662
17663 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17664
17665 <blockquote><p>
17666   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
17667 </p></blockquote>
17668
17669       </div>
17670       <div class="tags">
17671
17672
17673         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>.
17674
17675
17676       </div>
17677     </div>
17678     <div class="padding"></div>
17679
17680     <div class="entry">
17681       <div class="title">
17682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
17683       </div>
17684       <div class="date">
17685         20th November 2010
17686       </div>
17687       <div class="body">
17688         <p>Answering
17689 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
17690 call from the Gnash project</a> for
17691 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
17692 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
17693 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
17694 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
17695 releases out more often.</p>
17696
17697 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
17698 I have considered setting up a <a
17699 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
17700 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
17701 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
17702 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
17703 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
17704 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
17705 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
17706 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
17707 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
17708 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
17709 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
17710 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
17711
17712       </div>
17713       <div class="tags">
17714
17715
17716         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>.
17717
17718
17719       </div>
17720     </div>
17721     <div class="padding"></div>
17722
17723     <div class="entry">
17724       <div class="title">
17725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
17726       </div>
17727       <div class="date">
17728          9th November 2010
17729       </div>
17730       <div class="body">
17731         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
17732
17733 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
17734 3D linked in from
17735 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
17736 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
17737
17738       </div>
17739       <div class="tags">
17740
17741
17742         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>.
17743
17744
17745       </div>
17746     </div>
17747     <div class="padding"></div>
17748
17749     <div class="entry">
17750       <div class="title">
17751         <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>
17752       </div>
17753       <div class="date">
17754          7th November 2010
17755       </div>
17756       <div class="body">
17757         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
17758 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
17759 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
17760 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
17761 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
17762 working using this DVD.</p>
17763
17764 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
17765 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
17766 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
17767 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
17768 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
17769 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
17770 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
17771
17772 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
17773 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
17774 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
17775 Debian archive.</p>
17776
17777 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
17778 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
17779 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
17780 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
17781 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
17782 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
17783 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
17784 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
17785 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
17786 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
17787 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
17788 free X driver should work.</p>
17789
17790 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
17791 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
17792 DVD more useful again.</p>
17793
17794       </div>
17795       <div class="tags">
17796
17797
17798         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>.
17799
17800
17801       </div>
17802     </div>
17803     <div class="padding"></div>
17804
17805     <div class="entry">
17806       <div class="title">
17807         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
17808       </div>
17809       <div class="date">
17810         24th October 2010
17811       </div>
17812       <div class="body">
17813         <p>Some updates.</p>
17814
17815 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
17816 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
17817 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
17818 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
17819 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
17820 :)</p>
17821
17822 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
17823 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
17824 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
17825 It is called
17826 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
17827 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
17828 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
17829 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
17830 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
17831 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
17832
17833 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
17834 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
17835 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
17836 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
17837 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
17838 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
17839 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
17840 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
17841 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
17842 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
17843
17844       </div>
17845       <div class="tags">
17846
17847
17848         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>.
17849
17850
17851       </div>
17852     </div>
17853     <div class="padding"></div>
17854
17855     <div class="entry">
17856       <div class="title">
17857         <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>
17858       </div>
17859       <div class="date">
17860         19th October 2010
17861       </div>
17862       <div class="body">
17863         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
17864 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
17865 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
17866 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
17867 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
17868 AVM2 flash files.</p>
17869
17870 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
17871 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
17872 following text:</P>
17873
17874 <p><blockquote>
17875
17876   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
17877   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
17878
17879   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
17880
17881   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
17882
17883   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
17884   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
17885   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
17886   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
17887   days. The project web page is available from
17888   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
17889   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
17890   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
17891
17892   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
17893   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
17894   to get this to happen.</p>
17895
17896   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
17897   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
17898
17899 </blockquote></p>
17900
17901 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
17902 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
17903 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
17904 :)</p>
17905
17906       </div>
17907       <div class="tags">
17908
17909
17910         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>.
17911
17912
17913       </div>
17914     </div>
17915     <div class="padding"></div>
17916
17917     <div class="entry">
17918       <div class="title">
17919         <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>
17920       </div>
17921       <div class="date">
17922          9th October 2010
17923       </div>
17924       <div class="body">
17925         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
17926 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
17927 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
17928 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
17929 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
17930 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
17931 robots.</p>
17932
17933 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
17934 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
17935 a few less important features too.</p>
17936
17937 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
17938 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
17939 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
17940 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
17941
17942 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
17943 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
17944 source or binary package:</p>
17945
17946 <p><ul>
17947 <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>
17948 <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>
17949 <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>
17950 </ul></p>
17951
17952 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
17953 please let me know.</p>
17954
17955       </div>
17956       <div class="tags">
17957
17958
17959         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>.
17960
17961
17962       </div>
17963     </div>
17964     <div class="padding"></div>
17965
17966     <div class="entry">
17967       <div class="title">
17968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
17969       </div>
17970       <div class="date">
17971          3rd October 2010
17972       </div>
17973       <div class="body">
17974         <p><ul>
17975
17976 <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
17977 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
17978
17979 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
17980 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
17981 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
17982
17983 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
17984 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
17985 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
17986 simple setup.
17987
17988 </ul></p>
17989
17990       </div>
17991       <div class="tags">
17992
17993
17994         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>.
17995
17996
17997       </div>
17998     </div>
17999     <div class="padding"></div>
18000
18001     <div class="entry">
18002       <div class="title">
18003         <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>
18004       </div>
18005       <div class="date">
18006          9th September 2010
18007       </div>
18008       <div class="body">
18009         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
18010 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
18011 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
18012 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
18013 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
18014 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
18015 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
18016 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
18017 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
18018
18019 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
18020 written:</p>
18021
18022 <blockquote>
18023 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
18024 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
18025 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
18026 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
18027 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
18028
18029 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
18030 standard.</p>
18031 </blockquote>
18032
18033 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
18034 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
18035 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
18036 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
18037
18038 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
18039 read
18040 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
18041 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
18042 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
18043 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
18044 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
18045 the issue.  The solution is to support the
18046 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
18047 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
18048 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
18049
18050       </div>
18051       <div class="tags">
18052
18053
18054         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>.
18055
18056
18057       </div>
18058     </div>
18059     <div class="padding"></div>
18060
18061     <div class="entry">
18062       <div class="title">
18063         <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>
18064       </div>
18065       <div class="date">
18066          4th September 2010
18067       </div>
18068       <div class="body">
18069         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
18070 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
18071 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
18072 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
18073 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
18074 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
18075 installed.</p>
18076
18077 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
18078 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
18079 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
18080 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
18081 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18082 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
18083 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
18084 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
18085 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
18086
18087 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
18088 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
18089 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
18090 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
18091 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
18092 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
18093 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
18094 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
18095 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
18096 pages they want to visit.</p>
18097
18098 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
18099 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
18100 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
18101 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
18102 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
18103 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
18104 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
18105 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
18106 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
18107 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
18108 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
18109
18110       </div>
18111       <div class="tags">
18112
18113
18114         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>.
18115
18116
18117       </div>
18118     </div>
18119     <div class="padding"></div>
18120
18121     <div class="entry">
18122       <div class="title">
18123         <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>
18124       </div>
18125       <div class="date">
18126          1st September 2010
18127       </div>
18128       <div class="body">
18129         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
18130 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
18131 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
18132 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
18133 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
18134 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
18135 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
18136 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
18137 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
18138 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
18139 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
18140 drive around.</p>
18141
18142 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
18143 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
18144
18145 <p><pre>
18146 use Spykee;
18147 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
18148 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
18149 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
18150 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
18151 $spykee->left();
18152 sleep 2;
18153 $spykee->right();
18154 sleep 2;
18155 $spykee->forward();
18156 sleep 2;
18157 $spykee->back();
18158 sleep 2;
18159 $spykee->stop();
18160 </pre></p>
18161
18162 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
18163 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
18164 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
18165 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
18166 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
18167 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
18168 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
18169 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
18170 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
18171 going. :).</p>
18172
18173 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
18174 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
18175 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
18176 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
18177
18178       </div>
18179       <div class="tags">
18180
18181
18182         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>.
18183
18184
18185       </div>
18186     </div>
18187     <div class="padding"></div>
18188
18189     <div class="entry">
18190       <div class="title">
18191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
18192       </div>
18193       <div class="date">
18194         30th August 2010
18195       </div>
18196       <div class="body">
18197         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
18198 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
18199 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
18200 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
18201 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
18202 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
18203 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
18204
18205 <pre>
18206 % ln foo bar
18207 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
18208 %
18209 </pre>
18210
18211 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
18212 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
18213 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
18214 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
18215 nevertheless. :)</p>
18216
18217 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
18218 git from
18219 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
18220
18221       </div>
18222       <div class="tags">
18223
18224
18225         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>.
18226
18227
18228       </div>
18229     </div>
18230     <div class="padding"></div>
18231
18232     <div class="entry">
18233       <div class="title">
18234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
18235       </div>
18236       <div class="date">
18237         26th August 2010
18238       </div>
18239       <div class="body">
18240         <p>My file system sematics program
18241 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
18242 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
18243 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
18244 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
18245 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
18246 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
18247 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
18248 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
18249 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
18250 script:</p>
18251
18252 <pre>
18253 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
18254   mode_t retval = 0;
18255   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
18256   if (-1 != fd) {
18257     unlink(name);
18258     struct stat statbuf;
18259     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
18260       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
18261     }
18262     close(fd);
18263   }
18264   return retval;
18265 }
18266
18267 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
18268 int test_umask(void) {
18269   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
18270
18271   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
18272   mode_t newmode;
18273   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
18274     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
18275            newmode);
18276   }
18277   umask(007);
18278   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
18279     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
18280            newmode);
18281   }
18282
18283   umask (orig_umask);
18284   return 0;
18285 }
18286
18287 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18288   [...]
18289   test_umask();
18290   return 0;
18291 }
18292 </pre>
18293
18294 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
18295
18296 <pre>
18297 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18298 info: testing symlink creation
18299 info: testing subdirectory creation
18300 info: testing fcntl locking
18301   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18302   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18303   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18304   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18305   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18306   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18307 info: testing umask effect on file creation
18308 </pre>
18309
18310 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
18311 result:</p>
18312
18313 <pre>
18314 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18315 info: testing symlink creation
18316 info: testing subdirectory creation
18317 info: testing fcntl locking
18318   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18319   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18320   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18321   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18322   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18323   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18324 info: testing umask effect on file creation
18325   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
18326   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
18327 </pre>
18328
18329 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
18330 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
18331 directory.</p>
18332
18333 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
18334 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
18335
18336 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18337 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18338 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18339
18340       </div>
18341       <div class="tags">
18342
18343
18344         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>.
18345
18346
18347       </div>
18348     </div>
18349     <div class="padding"></div>
18350
18351     <div class="entry">
18352       <div class="title">
18353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
18354       </div>
18355       <div class="date">
18356         15th August 2010
18357       </div>
18358       <div class="body">
18359         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
18360 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
18361 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
18362 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
18363 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
18364 long time.</p>
18365
18366       </div>
18367       <div class="tags">
18368
18369
18370         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>.
18371
18372
18373       </div>
18374     </div>
18375     <div class="padding"></div>
18376
18377     <div class="entry">
18378       <div class="title">
18379         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
18380       </div>
18381       <div class="date">
18382          9th August 2010
18383       </div>
18384       <div class="body">
18385         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
18386 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
18387 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
18388 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
18389 generated configuration.</p>
18390
18391 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
18392 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
18393 without any manual configuration.</p>
18394
18395 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
18396 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
18397 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
18398 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
18399 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
18400 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
18401 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
18402 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
18403 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
18404 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
18405 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
18406 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
18407 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
18408 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
18409 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
18410 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
18411 use.</p>
18412
18413 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
18414 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
18415 working properly out of the box:</p>
18416
18417 <ul>
18418 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
18419 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
18420 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
18421 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
18422 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
18423 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
18424 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
18425 </ul>
18426
18427 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
18428
18429 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
18430 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
18431 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
18432 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
18433 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
18434
18435 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
18436 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
18437 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
18438 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
18439 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
18440 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
18441 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
18442 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
18443
18444 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
18445 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
18446 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
18447 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
18448 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
18449 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
18450 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
18451 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
18452 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
18453 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
18454 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
18455 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18456 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
18457 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
18458 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
18459 current DNS domain is used.</p>
18460
18461 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
18462 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
18463 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
18464 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
18465 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
18466 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
18467 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
18468 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
18469 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
18470 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
18471 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
18472 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
18473 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
18474
18475 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
18476 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
18477 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
18478 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
18479 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
18480 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
18481 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
18482 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
18483 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
18484 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
18485 do for now. :)</p>
18486
18487 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
18488 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
18489 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
18490 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
18491 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
18492 yet.</p>
18493
18494 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18495 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18496
18497 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
18498 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
18499 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
18500 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
18501
18502       </div>
18503       <div class="tags">
18504
18505
18506         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>.
18507
18508
18509       </div>
18510     </div>
18511     <div class="padding"></div>
18512
18513     <div class="entry">
18514       <div class="title">
18515         <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>
18516       </div>
18517       <div class="date">
18518          8th August 2010
18519       </div>
18520       <div class="body">
18521         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
18522 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
18523 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
18524 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
18525 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
18526 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
18527 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
18528
18529 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
18530 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
18531 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
18532 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
18533 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
18534 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
18535 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
18536
18537 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
18538 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
18539 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
18540 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
18541 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
18542
18543 <pre>
18544 /*
18545  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
18546  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
18547  * directory.
18548  * License: GPL v2 or later
18549  *
18550  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
18551  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
18552 */
18553
18554 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
18555 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
18556 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
18557
18558 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
18559
18560 #include &lt;errno.h>
18561 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
18562 #include &lt;stdio.h>
18563 #include &lt;string.h>
18564 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
18565 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
18566 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
18567 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
18568 #include &lt;unistd.h>
18569
18570 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18571 /*
18572  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
18573  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
18574  * below.
18575  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
18576  */
18577 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
18578 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
18579   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
18580 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
18581   char *zErrMsg;
18582   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18583   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
18584   unlink(name);
18585   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
18586   if( rc ){
18587     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
18588     sqlite3_close(db);
18589     return -1;
18590   }
18591
18592   /* create tables */
18593   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
18594   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
18595     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
18596     sqlite3_close(db);
18597     return -1;
18598   }
18599   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
18600   sqlite3_close(db);
18601   return 0;
18602 }
18603 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18604
18605 /*
18606  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
18607  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
18608  * done in the sqlite3 library.
18609  * See also
18610  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
18611  * POSIX specification
18612  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
18613  */
18614 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
18615   struct flock fl;
18616   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18617   unlink(name);
18618   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
18619   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
18620
18621   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
18622   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
18623   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18624   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18625   fl.l_len    = 1;
18626   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18627   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18628
18629   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18630   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18631   fl.l_len    = 510;
18632   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18633   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18634
18635   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18636   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18637   fl.l_len    = 1;
18638   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18639   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18640
18641   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18642   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18643   fl.l_len    = 1;
18644   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
18645   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18646
18647   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18648   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18649   fl.l_len    = 510;
18650   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18651
18652   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
18653   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18654   fl.l_len    = 2;
18655   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18656   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18657
18658   close(fd);
18659   return 0;
18660 }
18661
18662 /*
18663  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
18664  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
18665  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
18666  * slowing down file operations.
18667  */
18668 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
18669 #define LEVELS 5
18670   char *path = strdup("test");
18671   char *dirs[LEVELS];
18672   int level;
18673   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
18674   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
18675     char *newpath = NULL;
18676     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
18677       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
18678              path, strerror(errno));
18679       break;
18680     }
18681     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
18682     free(path);
18683     path = newpath;
18684   }
18685   return 0;
18686 }
18687
18688 /*
18689  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
18690  * KDE.
18691  */
18692 int test_symlinks(void) {
18693   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
18694   unlink("symlink");
18695   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
18696     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
18697   return 0;
18698 }
18699
18700 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18701   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
18702   test_symlinks();
18703   test_subdirectory_creation();
18704 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18705   test_sqlite_open();
18706 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18707   test_gcompris_locking();
18708   return 0;
18709 }
18710 </pre>
18711
18712 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
18713 this:</p>
18714
18715 <pre>
18716 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18717 info: testing symlink creation
18718 info: testing subdirectory creation
18719 info: sqlite worked
18720 info: testing fcntl locking
18721   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18722   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18723   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18724   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18725   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18726   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18727 </pre>
18728
18729 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
18730 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
18731 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
18732 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
18733 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
18734 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
18735 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
18736 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
18737
18738 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
18739 it. :)</p>
18740
18741 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18742 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18743 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18744
18745       </div>
18746       <div class="tags">
18747
18748
18749         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>.
18750
18751
18752       </div>
18753     </div>
18754     <div class="padding"></div>
18755
18756     <div class="entry">
18757       <div class="title">
18758         <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>
18759       </div>
18760       <div class="date">
18761          7th August 2010
18762       </div>
18763       <div class="body">
18764         <p>A few days ago, I
18765 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
18766 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
18767 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
18768 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
18769 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
18770 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
18771 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
18772 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
18773 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
18774
18775 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
18776 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
18777 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
18778 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
18779 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
18780 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
18781 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
18782 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
18783 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
18784 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
18785 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
18786 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
18787 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
18788 gave it a IP address.</p>
18789
18790 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
18791 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
18792 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
18793 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
18794 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
18795 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18796 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
18797 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
18798
18799 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
18800 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
18801 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
18802 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
18803 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
18804 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
18805
18806 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
18807 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
18808 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
18809 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
18810 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
18811 with UID and GID values.</p>
18812
18813 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18814 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18815
18816       </div>
18817       <div class="tags">
18818
18819
18820         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>.
18821
18822
18823       </div>
18824     </div>
18825     <div class="padding"></div>
18826
18827     <div class="entry">
18828       <div class="title">
18829         <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>
18830       </div>
18831       <div class="date">
18832          3rd August 2010
18833       </div>
18834       <div class="body">
18835         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
18836 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
18837 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
18838 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
18839 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
18840 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
18841 servers.</p>
18842
18843 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
18844 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
18845 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
18846 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
18847 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
18848 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
18849 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
18850 .uio.no.</p>
18851
18852 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
18853 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
18854 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
18855 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
18856 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
18857 university servers.</p>
18858
18859 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
18860 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
18861 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
18862 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
18863 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
18864 uses.</p>
18865
18866       </div>
18867       <div class="tags">
18868
18869
18870         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>.
18871
18872
18873       </div>
18874     </div>
18875     <div class="padding"></div>
18876
18877     <div class="entry">
18878       <div class="title">
18879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
18880       </div>
18881       <div class="date">
18882         27th July 2010
18883       </div>
18884       <div class="body">
18885         <p>I discovered this while doing
18886 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
18887 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
18888 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
18889 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
18890 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
18891
18892 <p>An example is from todays
18893 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
18894 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
18895 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
18896 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
18897 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
18898 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
18899 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
18900
18901 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
18902
18903 <blockquote><pre>
18904 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
18905  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
18906   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
18907 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
18908  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
18909 </pre></blockquote>
18910
18911 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
18912 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
18913 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
18914 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
18915 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
18916 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
18917 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
18918 of dependency loops.</p>
18919
18920 <p>Thanks to
18921 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
18922 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
18923 dependencies
18924 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
18925 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
18926
18927 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
18928 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
18929 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
18930 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
18931 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
18932 it.</p>
18933
18934       </div>
18935       <div class="tags">
18936
18937
18938         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>.
18939
18940
18941       </div>
18942     </div>
18943     <div class="padding"></div>
18944
18945     <div class="entry">
18946       <div class="title">
18947         <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>
18948       </div>
18949       <div class="date">
18950         27th July 2010
18951       </div>
18952       <div class="body">
18953         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
18954 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
18955 completed.</p>
18956
18957 <blockquote>
18958 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
18959 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
18960 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
18961 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
18962 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
18963 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
18964 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
18965 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
18966
18967 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
18968 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
18969 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
18970
18971 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
18972 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
18973 much.</p>
18974
18975 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
18976
18977 <ul>
18978 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
18979 <ul>
18980   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
18981          combination with some new artwork
18982   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
18983   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
18984   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
18985   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
18986   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
18987   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
18988   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
18989   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
18990   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
18991 </ul></li>
18992 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
18993     Enabled for:
18994 <ul>
18995   <li>PAM
18996   <li>LDAP
18997   <li>IMAP
18998   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
18999 </ul>
19000 </li>
19001 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
19002 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
19003     fetched from LDAP.</li>
19004 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
19005 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
19006 </ul>
19007 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
19008
19009 <ul>
19010 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
19011     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
19012     for testing.</li>
19013 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
19014     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
19015     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
19016 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
19017 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
19018 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
19019 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
19020     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
19021 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
19022     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
19023     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
19024 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
19025     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
19026     and help out with translations.</li>
19027 </ul>
19028
19029 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
19030
19031 <ul>
19032 <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>
19033 <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>
19034 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19035 </ul>
19036 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
19037
19038 <ul>
19039 <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>
19040 <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>
19041 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19042 </ul>
19043
19044 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
19045 get closer to the final release.</p>
19046
19047 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
19048
19049 <ul>
19050 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19051 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19052 </ul>
19053
19054 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
19055 <ul>
19056 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19057 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19058 </ul>
19059 <p>How to report bugs:
19060 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
19061
19062 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
19063 </blockquote>
19064
19065       </div>
19066       <div class="tags">
19067
19068
19069         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>.
19070
19071
19072       </div>
19073     </div>
19074     <div class="padding"></div>
19075
19076     <div class="entry">
19077       <div class="title">
19078         <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>
19079       </div>
19080       <div class="date">
19081         25th July 2010
19082       </div>
19083       <div class="body">
19084         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
19085 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
19086 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
19087 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
19088 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
19089
19090 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
19091 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
19092 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
19093 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
19094 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
19095 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
19096 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
19097
19098 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
19099 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
19100 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
19101 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
19102 up. :)</p>
19103
19104 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
19105 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
19106 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
19107
19108 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
19109 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
19110 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
19111 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
19112 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
19113 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
19114 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
19115 release another day.</p>
19116
19117 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
19118 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19119
19120       </div>
19121       <div class="tags">
19122
19123
19124         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>.
19125
19126
19127       </div>
19128     </div>
19129     <div class="padding"></div>
19130
19131     <div class="entry">
19132       <div class="title">
19133         <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>
19134       </div>
19135       <div class="date">
19136         18th July 2010
19137       </div>
19138       <div class="body">
19139         <p>Thanks to
19140 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
19141 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
19142 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
19143 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
19144 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
19145 only available from the development server, until more experience is
19146 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
19147
19148 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
19149 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
19150 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
19151 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
19152 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
19153 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
19154 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
19155
19156       </div>
19157       <div class="tags">
19158
19159
19160         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>.
19161
19162
19163       </div>
19164     </div>
19165     <div class="padding"></div>
19166
19167     <div class="entry">
19168       <div class="title">
19169         <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>
19170       </div>
19171       <div class="date">
19172         17th July 2010
19173       </div>
19174       <div class="body">
19175         <p>This is a
19176 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
19177 on my
19178 <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
19179 work</a> on
19180 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
19181 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
19182
19183 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
19184 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
19185 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
19186 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
19187
19188 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
19189 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
19190 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
19191
19192 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
19193
19194 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
19195 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
19196 the web.
19197
19198 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
19199 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
19200 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
19201 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
19202 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
19203 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
19204
19205 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
19206 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
19207 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
19208 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
19209 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
19210 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
19211 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
19212 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
19213 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
19214 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
19215 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
19216 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
19217 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
19218 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
19219 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
19220 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
19221
19222 <blockquote><pre>
19223 ldapsearch -h ldap \
19224   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
19225   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
19226   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
19227   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
19228   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
19229   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
19230
19231 ldapsearch -h ldap \
19232   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
19233   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
19234   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
19235   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
19236   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
19237 </pre></blockquote>
19238
19239 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
19240 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
19241 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
19242 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19243 also exist.</p>
19244
19245 <blockquote><pre>
19246 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19247 objectclass: top
19248 objectclass: dnsdomain
19249 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19250 dc: tjener
19251 arecord: 10.0.2.2
19252 associateddomain: tjener.intern
19253
19254 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19255 objectclass: top
19256 objectclass: dnsdomain2
19257 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19258 dc: 2
19259 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
19260 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
19261 </pre></blockquote>
19262
19263 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
19264 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
19265 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
19266 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
19267 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
19268 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
19269 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
19270 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
19271 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
19272 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
19273 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
19274 instead.</p>
19275
19276 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
19277 like this:</p>
19278
19279 <blockquote><pre>
19280 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
19281   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
19282   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
19283   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
19284   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
19285   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
19286
19287 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
19288   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
19289 </pre></blockquote>
19290
19291 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
19292 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
19293 reverse lookups.</p>
19294
19295 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
19296 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
19297 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
19298 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
19299
19300 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
19301 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
19302 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
19303
19304 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
19305 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
19306 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
19307 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
19308 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
19309
19310 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
19311 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
19312 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
19313 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
19314 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
19315
19316 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
19317 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
19318 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
19319 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
19320 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
19321 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
19322
19323 <blockquote><pre>
19324 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
19325     SUP top
19326     AUXILIARY
19327     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
19328           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
19329           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
19330           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
19331           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
19332     ))
19333 </pre></blockquote>
19334
19335 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
19336 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
19337 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
19338 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
19339 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
19340 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
19341
19342 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
19343
19344 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
19345 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
19346 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
19347 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
19348 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
19349
19350 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
19351 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
19352 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
19353 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
19354
19355 <blockquote><pre>
19356 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
19357 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
19358 </pre></blockquote>
19359
19360 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
19361 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
19362 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
19363 search result is this entry:</p>
19364
19365 <blockquote><pre>
19366 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19367 cn: dhcp
19368 objectClass: top
19369 objectClass: dhcpServer
19370 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19371 </pre></blockquote>
19372
19373 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
19374 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
19375 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
19376 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
19377 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
19378 The search result is this entry:</p>
19379
19380 <blockquote><pre>
19381 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19382 cn: DHCP Config
19383 objectClass: top
19384 objectClass: dhcpService
19385 objectClass: dhcpOptions
19386 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19387 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
19388 dhcpStatements: authoritative
19389 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
19390 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
19391 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
19392 </pre></blockquote>
19393
19394 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
19395 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
19396 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
19397 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
19398 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
19399 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
19400 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
19401 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
19402 related computer objects.</p>
19403
19404 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
19405 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
19406 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
19407 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
19408 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
19409 like:</p>
19410
19411 <blockquote><pre>
19412 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19413 cn: hostname
19414 objectClass: top
19415 objectClass: dhcpHost
19416 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19417 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
19418 </pre></blockquote>
19419
19420 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
19421 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
19422 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
19423 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
19424 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
19425 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
19426 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
19427 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
19428 structural object class.
19429
19430 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
19431
19432 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
19433 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
19434 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
19435 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
19436 in the configuration.</p>
19437
19438 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
19439 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
19440 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
19441 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
19442 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
19443 structure.</p>
19444
19445 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
19446 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
19447
19448 <blockquote><pre>
19449 ou=services
19450   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
19451     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
19452     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
19453       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
19454         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
19455     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
19456       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
19457         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
19458     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
19459       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
19460 </pre></blockquote>
19461
19462 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
19463 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
19464 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
19465 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
19466
19467 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
19468 like this:</p>
19469
19470 <blockquote><pre>
19471 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19472 dc: hostname
19473 objectClass: top
19474 objectClass: dhcpHost
19475 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19476 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
19477 associateddomain: hostname.intern
19478 arecord: 10.11.12.13
19479 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19480 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
19481 </pre></blockquote>
19482
19483 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
19484 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
19485 auxiliary object class.</p>
19486
19487       </div>
19488       <div class="tags">
19489
19490
19491         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>.
19492
19493
19494       </div>
19495     </div>
19496     <div class="padding"></div>
19497
19498     <div class="entry">
19499       <div class="title">
19500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
19501       </div>
19502       <div class="date">
19503         14th July 2010
19504       </div>
19505       <div class="body">
19506         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
19507 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
19508 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
19509 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
19510 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
19511
19512 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
19513 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
19514
19515 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
19516 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
19517 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
19518 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
19519 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
19520 to a slave DNS server.</p>
19521
19522 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
19523 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
19524 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
19525 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
19526 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
19527 seem to work.</p>
19528
19529 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
19530 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
19531 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
19532 this:</p>
19533
19534 <blockquote><pre>
19535   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19536   cn: hostname
19537   objectClass: dhcphost
19538   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19539   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
19540   associateddomain: hostname.intern
19541   arecord: 10.11.12.13
19542   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19543   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
19544   ldapconfigsound: Y
19545 </pre></blockquote>
19546
19547 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
19548 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
19549 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
19550 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
19551
19552 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
19553 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
19554 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
19555 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
19556 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
19557 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
19558 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
19559 might be a good place to put it.</p>
19560
19561 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19562 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19563
19564       </div>
19565       <div class="tags">
19566
19567
19568         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>.
19569
19570
19571       </div>
19572     </div>
19573     <div class="padding"></div>
19574
19575     <div class="entry">
19576       <div class="title">
19577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
19578       </div>
19579       <div class="date">
19580         11th July 2010
19581       </div>
19582       <div class="body">
19583         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
19584 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
19585 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
19586 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
19587
19588 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
19589 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
19590 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
19591 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
19592 LTSP clients.</p>
19593
19594 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
19595 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
19596 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
19597
19598 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
19599 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
19600 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
19601
19602 <blockquote><pre>
19603 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
19604 #
19605 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
19606 #
19607 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
19608 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
19609 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
19610 #
19611 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
19612 # existence of attribute names.
19613 #
19614 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
19615 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
19616 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
19617 #
19618 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
19619 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
19620 #
19621 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
19622 #     SUP top
19623 #     AUXILIARY
19624 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
19625
19626 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
19627 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
19628     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
19629     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
19630         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
19631         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
19632             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
19633             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
19634             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
19635             # bass value on to clients
19636             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
19637         done
19638     done
19639 fi
19640 </pre></blockquote>
19641
19642 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
19643 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
19644 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
19645 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
19646 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
19647
19648 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19649 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19650
19651 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
19652 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
19653 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
19654 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
19655 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
19656 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
19657
19658       </div>
19659       <div class="tags">
19660
19661
19662         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>.
19663
19664
19665       </div>
19666     </div>
19667     <div class="padding"></div>
19668
19669     <div class="entry">
19670       <div class="title">
19671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19672       </div>
19673       <div class="date">
19674          9th July 2010
19675       </div>
19676       <div class="body">
19677         <p>Since
19678 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
19679 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
19680 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
19681 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
19682 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
19683 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
19684 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
19685 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
19686 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
19687 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
19688 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
19689 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
19690 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
19691
19692       </div>
19693       <div class="tags">
19694
19695
19696         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>.
19697
19698
19699       </div>
19700     </div>
19701     <div class="padding"></div>
19702
19703     <div class="entry">
19704       <div class="title">
19705         <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>
19706       </div>
19707       <div class="date">
19708          3rd July 2010
19709       </div>
19710       <div class="body">
19711         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
19712 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
19713 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
19714 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
19715 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
19716 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
19717 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
19718 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
19719
19720 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
19721 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
19722 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
19723 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
19724 publish the difference.</p>
19725
19726 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19727
19728 <blockquote><p>
19729   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19730   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
19731   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
19732   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
19733   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
19734   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19735   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
19736   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
19737 </p></blockquote>
19738
19739 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19740
19741 <blockquote><p>
19742   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
19743   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
19744   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
19745   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
19746   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
19747   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
19748   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
19749   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
19750   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19751   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19752   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
19753   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
19754   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
19755   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
19756   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
19757   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
19758   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
19759   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
19760   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
19761   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
19762 </p></blockquote>
19763
19764 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19765
19766 <blockquote><p>
19767   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
19768   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
19769   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19770   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19771   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
19772   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
19773   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
19774   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19775   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19776   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19777   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19778   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
19779   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
19780   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
19781   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
19782   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
19783   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
19784   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
19785   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
19786   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
19787   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
19788 </p></blockquote>
19789
19790 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19791
19792 <blockquote><p>
19793   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
19794   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
19795   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
19796 </p></blockquote>
19797
19798 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
19799 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
19800 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
19801 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
19802 the difference somewhat.
19803
19804       </div>
19805       <div class="tags">
19806
19807
19808         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>.
19809
19810
19811       </div>
19812     </div>
19813     <div class="padding"></div>
19814
19815     <div class="entry">
19816       <div class="title">
19817         <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>
19818       </div>
19819       <div class="date">
19820          1st July 2010
19821       </div>
19822       <div class="body">
19823         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
19824 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
19825 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
19826 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
19827 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
19828 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
19829 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
19830 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
19831 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
19832
19833 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19834
19835 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
19836 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
19837 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
19838 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
19839 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
19840 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
19841 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
19842 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
19843 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
19844 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
19845 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
19846 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
19847 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
19848 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
19849 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
19850
19851 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
19852
19853 <blockquote><pre>
19854 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
19855 </pre></blockquote>
19856
19857 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
19858 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
19859 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
19860 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
19861 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
19862 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
19863 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
19864 on how to get this working.</p>
19865
19866 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
19867 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
19868 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
19869 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
19870 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
19871 instructions I found in the
19872 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
19873 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
19874
19875 <blockquote><pre>
19876         debug-level             0
19877         reload-count            unlimited
19878         paranoia                no
19879
19880         enable-cache            passwd          yes
19881         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
19882         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
19883         suggested-size          passwd          211
19884         check-files             passwd          yes
19885         persistent              passwd          yes
19886         shared                  passwd          yes
19887         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
19888         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
19889
19890         enable-cache            group           yes
19891         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
19892         negative-time-to-live   group           20
19893         suggested-size          group           211
19894         check-files             group           yes
19895         persistent              group           yes
19896         shared                  group           yes
19897         max-db-size             group           33554432
19898         auto-propagate          group           yes
19899
19900         enable-cache            hosts           no
19901         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
19902         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
19903         suggested-size          hosts           211
19904         check-files             hosts           yes
19905         persistent              hosts           yes
19906         shared                  hosts           yes
19907         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
19908
19909         enable-cache            services        yes
19910         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
19911         negative-time-to-live   services        20
19912         suggested-size          services        211
19913         check-files             services        yes
19914         persistent              services        yes
19915         shared                  services        yes
19916         max-db-size             services        33554432
19917 </pre></blockquote>
19918
19919 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
19920 automatically like the one provided in
19921 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
19922 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
19923 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
19924 look like this:</p>
19925
19926 <blockquote><pre>
19927 passwd:         files ldap
19928 group:          files ldap
19929 shadow:         files ldap
19930 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
19931 networks:       files
19932 protocols:      files
19933 services:       files
19934 ethers:         files
19935 rpc:            files
19936 netgroup:       files ldap
19937 </pre></blockquote>
19938
19939 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
19940 shadow and netgroup.</p>
19941
19942 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
19943 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
19944 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
19945 attributes cached.
19946
19947 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
19948   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19949
19950 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
19951 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
19952 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
19953 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
19954 discovered sssd.</p>
19955
19956 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
19957
19958 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
19959 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
19960 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
19961 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
19962 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
19963 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
19964 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
19965 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
19966 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
19967 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
19968 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
19969 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
19970 version 1.2 is now in testing.
19971
19972 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
19973 roaming setup I want</p>
19974
19975 <blockquote><pre>
19976 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
19977 </pre></blockquote>
19978
19979 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
19980 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
19981
19982 <blockquote><pre>
19983 [sssd]
19984 config_file_version = 2
19985 reconnection_retries = 3
19986 sbus_timeout = 30
19987 services = nss, pam
19988 domains = INTERN
19989
19990 [nss]
19991 filter_groups = root
19992 filter_users = root
19993 reconnection_retries = 3
19994
19995 [pam]
19996 reconnection_retries = 3
19997
19998 [domain/INTERN]
19999 enumerate = false
20000 cache_credentials = true
20001
20002 id_provider = ldap
20003 auth_provider = ldap
20004 chpass_provider = ldap
20005
20006 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
20007 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20008 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
20009 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
20010 </pre></blockquote>
20011
20012 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
20013 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
20014
20015 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
20016 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
20017 modify it manually.</p>
20018
20019 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20020 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20021
20022       </div>
20023       <div class="tags">
20024
20025
20026         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>.
20027
20028
20029       </div>
20030     </div>
20031     <div class="padding"></div>
20032
20033     <div class="entry">
20034       <div class="title">
20035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20036       </div>
20037       <div class="date">
20038         28th June 2010
20039       </div>
20040       <div class="body">
20041         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
20042 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
20043 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
20044 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
20045 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
20046 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
20047 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
20048 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
20049 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
20050 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
20051
20052 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
20053 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
20054 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
20055 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
20056 released.</p>
20057
20058 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
20059 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
20060 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
20061 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
20062
20063 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
20064 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20065
20066 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
20067 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
20068 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
20069 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
20070 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
20071
20072       </div>
20073       <div class="tags">
20074
20075
20076         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>.
20077
20078
20079       </div>
20080     </div>
20081     <div class="padding"></div>
20082
20083     <div class="entry">
20084       <div class="title">
20085         <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>
20086       </div>
20087       <div class="date">
20088         24th June 2010
20089       </div>
20090       <div class="body">
20091         <p>A while back, I
20092 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
20093 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
20094 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
20095 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
20096
20097 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
20098 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
20099 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
20100 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
20101
20102 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
20103 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
20104 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
20105 Debian Edu.</p>
20106
20107 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
20108 the
20109 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
20110 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
20111 available today from IETF.</p>
20112
20113 <pre>
20114 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
20115 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
20116 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
20117  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
20118         NAME 'dhcpHost'
20119         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
20120 -       SUP top
20121 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
20122         MUST cn
20123         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
20124         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
20125 </pre>
20126
20127 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
20128 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
20129 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
20130
20131 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20132 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20133
20134       </div>
20135       <div class="tags">
20136
20137
20138         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>.
20139
20140
20141       </div>
20142     </div>
20143     <div class="padding"></div>
20144
20145     <div class="entry">
20146       <div class="title">
20147         <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>
20148       </div>
20149       <div class="date">
20150         16th June 2010
20151       </div>
20152       <div class="body">
20153         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
20154 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
20155 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
20156 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
20157 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
20158 this:
20159
20160 <blockquote><pre>
20161 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20162 tasksel --new-install
20163 </pre></blockquote>
20164
20165 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
20166 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
20167 any output what so ever.
20168
20169 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
20170 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
20171 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
20172 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
20173 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
20174 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
20175 code like this:
20176
20177 <blockquote><pre>
20178 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20179 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
20180 $cmd
20181 </pre></blockquote>
20182
20183 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
20184 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
20185 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
20186 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
20187 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
20188 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
20189 installation.</p>
20190
20191 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
20192 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
20193 like this.</p>
20194
20195       </div>
20196       <div class="tags">
20197
20198
20199         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>.
20200
20201
20202       </div>
20203     </div>
20204     <div class="padding"></div>
20205
20206     <div class="entry">
20207       <div class="title">
20208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
20209       </div>
20210       <div class="date">
20211         13th June 2010
20212       </div>
20213       <div class="body">
20214         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
20215 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
20216 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
20217 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
20218 pages.</p>
20219
20220 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
20221 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
20222 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
20223 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
20224 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
20225 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
20226 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
20227 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
20228 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
20229 see how the project is doing.</p>
20230
20231 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
20232 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
20233 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
20234 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
20235 Windows.  This is great.</p>
20236
20237       </div>
20238       <div class="tags">
20239
20240
20241         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>.
20242
20243
20244       </div>
20245     </div>
20246     <div class="padding"></div>
20247
20248     <div class="entry">
20249       <div class="title">
20250         <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>
20251       </div>
20252       <div class="date">
20253         13th June 2010
20254       </div>
20255       <div class="body">
20256         <p>My
20257 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
20258 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
20259 finally made the upgrade logs available from
20260 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
20261 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
20262 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
20263 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
20264
20265 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
20266 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
20267 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
20268 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
20269 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
20270 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
20271 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
20272 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
20273
20274 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
20275 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
20276 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
20277 too surprising.</p>
20278
20279 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
20280 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
20281 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
20282 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
20283 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
20284 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
20285 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
20286 continue.</p>
20287
20288 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
20289 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
20290   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
20291   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
20292   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
20293   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
20294   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
20295   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20296   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20297   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
20298   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
20299   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
20300   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
20301   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20302   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20303   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20304   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20305   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20306   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
20307   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
20308   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
20309   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
20310   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
20311   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
20312   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
20313   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
20314   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
20315   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
20316   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
20317   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
20318
20319 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
20320
20321 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
20322   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
20323   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
20324   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
20325   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
20326   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
20327   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
20328   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
20329   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
20330   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
20331   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20332   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
20333   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20334   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
20335   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
20336   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
20337   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
20338   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
20339   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
20340   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
20341   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
20342   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
20343   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
20344   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
20345   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20346   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
20347   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
20348   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
20349   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
20350   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20351   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
20352   zip</p>
20353
20354 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
20355
20356 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
20357   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
20358   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
20359   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
20360   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
20361   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
20362   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20363   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20364   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
20365   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
20366   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
20367   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
20368   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20369   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20370   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20371   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20372   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20373   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
20374   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
20375   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
20376   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
20377   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
20378   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
20379   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
20380   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
20381   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
20382   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
20383   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
20384
20385 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
20386 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
20387   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
20388   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
20389   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
20390   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
20391   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
20392   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
20393   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
20394   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
20395   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
20396   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
20397   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
20398   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
20399   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
20400   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
20401   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
20402   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
20403   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
20404   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
20405   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
20406   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
20407   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
20408   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
20409   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
20410   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
20411   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
20412   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
20413   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
20414   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
20415   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
20416   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
20417   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
20418   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
20419   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
20420   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20421   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
20422   xulrunner-1.9</p>
20423
20424
20425       </div>
20426       <div class="tags">
20427
20428
20429         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>.
20430
20431
20432       </div>
20433     </div>
20434     <div class="padding"></div>
20435
20436     <div class="entry">
20437       <div class="title">
20438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
20439       </div>
20440       <div class="date">
20441         11th June 2010
20442       </div>
20443       <div class="body">
20444         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
20445 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
20446 have been discovered and reported in the process
20447 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
20448 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
20449 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
20450 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
20451 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
20452
20453 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
20454 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
20455 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
20456 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
20457 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
20458 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
20459
20460 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
20461 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
20462 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20463 is created.  The bug report
20464 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
20465 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
20466 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
20467 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
20468 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
20469 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
20470 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
20471 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
20472 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
20473 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
20474 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
20475 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
20476 Debian Squeeze.</p>
20477
20478 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
20479 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
20480 trick:</p>
20481
20482 <blockquote><pre>
20483 #!/bin/sh
20484 set -ex
20485
20486 if [ "$1" ] ; then
20487     desktop=$1
20488 else
20489     desktop=gnome
20490 fi
20491
20492 from=lenny
20493 to=squeeze
20494
20495 exec &lt; /dev/null
20496 unset LANG
20497 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
20498 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
20499 fuser -mv .
20500 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
20501 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20502 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
20503 #!/bin/sh
20504 exit 101
20505 EOF
20506 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
20507 exit_cleanup() {
20508     umount $tmpdir/proc
20509 }
20510 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
20511 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
20512 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
20513
20514 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
20515
20516 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
20517 # to return the correct answers.
20518 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
20519     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
20520
20521 # Include the desktop and laptop task
20522 for test in desktop laptop ; do
20523     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
20524 #!/bin/sh
20525 exit 2
20526 EOF
20527     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
20528 done
20529
20530 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20531 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
20532 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
20533 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
20534
20535 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
20536 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20537 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20538 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
20539 fuser -mv
20540 </pre></blockquote>
20541
20542 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
20543 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
20544 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
20545 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
20546 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
20547 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
20548
20549 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
20550 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
20551 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
20552 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
20553 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
20554 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
20555 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
20556
20557 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
20558 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
20559 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
20560 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
20561 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
20562 packages.</p>
20563
20564       </div>
20565       <div class="tags">
20566
20567
20568         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>.
20569
20570
20571       </div>
20572     </div>
20573     <div class="padding"></div>
20574
20575     <div class="entry">
20576       <div class="title">
20577         <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>
20578       </div>
20579       <div class="date">
20580          6th June 2010
20581       </div>
20582       <div class="body">
20583         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
20584 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
20585 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
20586 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
20587 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
20588 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
20589 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
20590
20591 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
20592 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
20593 COLUMNS):</p>
20594
20595 <blockquote><pre>
20596 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
20597 previous=N
20598 PREVLEVEL=
20599 RUNLEVEL=
20600 runlevel=S
20601 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
20602 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
20603 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
20604 </pre></blockquote>
20605
20606 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
20607 script.</p>
20608
20609 <blockquote><pre>
20610 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
20611 previous=N
20612 PREVLEVEL=N
20613 RUNLEVEL=S
20614 runlevel=S
20615 </pre></blockquote>
20616
20617 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
20618 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
20619 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
20620
20621 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
20622 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
20623 choice.</p>
20624
20625       </div>
20626       <div class="tags">
20627
20628
20629         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>.
20630
20631
20632       </div>
20633     </div>
20634     <div class="padding"></div>
20635
20636     <div class="entry">
20637       <div class="title">
20638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
20639       </div>
20640       <div class="date">
20641          6th June 2010
20642       </div>
20643       <div class="body">
20644         <p>Via the
20645 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
20646 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
20647 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
20648 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
20649 following the standards wars of today.</p>
20650
20651       </div>
20652       <div class="tags">
20653
20654
20655         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>.
20656
20657
20658       </div>
20659     </div>
20660     <div class="padding"></div>
20661
20662     <div class="entry">
20663       <div class="title">
20664         <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>
20665       </div>
20666       <div class="date">
20667          3rd June 2010
20668       </div>
20669       <div class="body">
20670         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
20671 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
20672 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
20673 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
20674 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
20675
20676 <blockquote><pre>
20677 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
20678   vendor                    count
20679   Dell Computer Corporation     1
20680     PowerEdge 1750              1
20681   IBM                           1
20682     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
20683   Intel                         2
20684   [no-dmi-info]                 3
20685 maintainer:~#
20686 </pre></blockquote>
20687
20688 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
20689 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
20690 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
20691 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
20692 option to list the individual machines.</p>
20693
20694 <p>A larger list is
20695 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
20696 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
20697 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
20698 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
20699 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
20700 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
20701 collector.</p>
20702
20703       </div>
20704       <div class="tags">
20705
20706
20707         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>.
20708
20709
20710       </div>
20711     </div>
20712     <div class="padding"></div>
20713
20714     <div class="entry">
20715       <div class="title">
20716         <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>
20717       </div>
20718       <div class="date">
20719          1st June 2010
20720       </div>
20721       <div class="body">
20722         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
20723 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
20724 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
20725 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
20726 wait.</p>
20727
20728 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
20729 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
20730 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
20731 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
20732 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
20733 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
20734
20735 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
20736 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
20737 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
20738 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
20739 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
20740 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
20741 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
20742 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
20743
20744 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
20745
20746       </div>
20747       <div class="tags">
20748
20749
20750         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>.
20751
20752
20753       </div>
20754     </div>
20755     <div class="padding"></div>
20756
20757     <div class="entry">
20758       <div class="title">
20759         <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>
20760       </div>
20761       <div class="date">
20762         27th May 2010
20763       </div>
20764       <div class="body">
20765         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
20766 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
20767 issues are known and should be solved:
20768
20769 <p><ul>
20770
20771 <li>The wicd package seen to
20772 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
20773 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
20774 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
20775 seem to be on the case.</li>
20776
20777 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
20778 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
20779 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
20780 maintainer is on the case.</li>
20781
20782 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
20783 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
20784 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
20785 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
20786 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
20787 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
20788 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
20789 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
20790
20791 </ul></p>
20792
20793 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
20794 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
20795 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
20796 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
20797
20798 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20799 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20800 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20801 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20802
20803 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
20804
20805       </div>
20806       <div class="tags">
20807
20808
20809         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>.
20810
20811
20812       </div>
20813     </div>
20814     <div class="padding"></div>
20815
20816     <div class="entry">
20817       <div class="title">
20818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
20819       </div>
20820       <div class="date">
20821         22nd May 2010
20822       </div>
20823       <div class="body">
20824         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
20825 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
20826 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
20827 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
20828
20829 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
20830 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
20831 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
20832 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
20833 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
20834 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
20835 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
20836 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
20837 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
20838 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
20839 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
20840 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
20841 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
20842 going to work.</p>
20843
20844 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
20845 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
20846 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
20847 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
20848 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
20849 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
20850 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
20851 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
20852 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
20853 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
20854 Edu.</p>
20855
20856 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
20857 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
20858 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
20859 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
20860 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
20861 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
20862
20863 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
20864 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
20865
20866       </div>
20867       <div class="tags">
20868
20869
20870         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>.
20871
20872
20873       </div>
20874     </div>
20875     <div class="padding"></div>
20876
20877     <div class="entry">
20878       <div class="title">
20879         <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>
20880       </div>
20881       <div class="date">
20882         19th May 2010
20883       </div>
20884       <div class="body">
20885         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
20886 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
20887 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
20888 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
20889 into unstable.  The
20890 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
20891 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
20892 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
20893 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
20894 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20895 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
20896 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
20897
20898 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
20899 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
20900 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
20901 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
20902 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
20903 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
20904 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
20905 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
20906
20907 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
20908 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
20909 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
20910 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
20911 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
20912 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
20913 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
20914
20915 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
20916 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
20917 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
20918 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
20919 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
20920 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
20921 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
20922 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
20923 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
20924 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
20925 on the home directory servers.</p>
20926
20927 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
20928 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
20929 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
20930 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
20931 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
20932 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
20933
20934 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20935 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20936
20937       </div>
20938       <div class="tags">
20939
20940
20941         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>.
20942
20943
20944       </div>
20945     </div>
20946     <div class="padding"></div>
20947
20948     <div class="entry">
20949       <div class="title">
20950         <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>
20951       </div>
20952       <div class="date">
20953         14th May 2010
20954       </div>
20955       <div class="body">
20956         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
20957 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
20958 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
20959 expected, if I am to believe the
20960 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20961 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
20962 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
20963 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
20964 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
20965 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
20966 version.</p>
20967
20968 More information about
20969 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20970 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
20971 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
20972 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20973
20974 <blockquote><pre>
20975 CONCURRENCY=none
20976 </pre></blockquote>
20977
20978 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20979 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20980 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20981 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20982
20983       </div>
20984       <div class="tags">
20985
20986
20987         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>.
20988
20989
20990       </div>
20991     </div>
20992     <div class="padding"></div>
20993
20994     <div class="entry">
20995       <div class="title">
20996         <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>
20997       </div>
20998       <div class="date">
20999         14th May 2010
21000       </div>
21001       <div class="body">
21002         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
21003 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
21004 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
21005 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
21006 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
21007 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
21008 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
21009 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
21010
21011 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
21012 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
21013 this on the collector host:</p>
21014
21015 <blockquote><pre>
21016 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
21017 </pre></blockquote>
21018
21019 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
21020 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
21021
21022 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
21023 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
21024 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
21025 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
21026 written yet.</p>
21027
21028       </div>
21029       <div class="tags">
21030
21031
21032         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>.
21033
21034
21035       </div>
21036     </div>
21037     <div class="padding"></div>
21038
21039     <div class="entry">
21040       <div class="title">
21041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
21042       </div>
21043       <div class="date">
21044         13th May 2010
21045       </div>
21046       <div class="body">
21047         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
21048 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
21049 has been
21050 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
21051
21052 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
21053 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
21054 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
21055 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
21056 based boot system.  Tollef is
21057 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
21058 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
21059 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
21060 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
21061 at the moment do not.</p>
21062
21063 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
21064 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
21065 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
21066 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
21067 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
21068 way forward.</p>
21069
21070 <p>In the mean time, based on the
21071 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21072 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
21073 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
21074 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
21075 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
21076 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
21077 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
21078 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
21079
21080       </div>
21081       <div class="tags">
21082
21083
21084         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>.
21085
21086
21087       </div>
21088     </div>
21089     <div class="padding"></div>
21090
21091     <div class="entry">
21092       <div class="title">
21093         <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>
21094       </div>
21095       <div class="date">
21096          6th May 2010
21097       </div>
21098       <div class="body">
21099         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
21100 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
21101 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
21102 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
21103 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21104 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
21105 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
21106
21107 <blockquote><pre>
21108 CONCURRENCY=makefile
21109 </pre></blockquote>
21110
21111 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
21112 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
21113 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
21114 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
21115 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
21116 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
21117 make this happen.</p>
21118
21119 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
21120 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
21121 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
21122 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
21123 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
21124
21125 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
21126 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
21127 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
21128 fix the remaining issues.</p>
21129
21130 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21131 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21132 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21133 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21134
21135       </div>
21136       <div class="tags">
21137
21138
21139         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>.
21140
21141
21142       </div>
21143     </div>
21144     <div class="padding"></div>
21145
21146     <div class="entry">
21147       <div class="title">
21148         <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>
21149       </div>
21150       <div class="date">
21151          2nd May 2010
21152       </div>
21153       <div class="body">
21154         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
21155 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
21156 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
21157
21158 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
21159 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
21160 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
21161 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
21162 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
21163
21164 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
21165 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
21166
21167 <blockquote><pre>
21168 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
21169 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
21170 Password expires                                        : never
21171 Password inactive                                       : never
21172 Account expires                                         : never
21173 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
21174 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
21175 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
21176 root@tjener:~#
21177 </pre></blockquote>
21178
21179 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
21180 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
21181 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
21182 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
21183 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
21184 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
21185
21186 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
21187 intended:</p>
21188
21189 <blockquote><pre>
21190 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
21191 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
21192 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
21193 Password expires                                        : never
21194 Password inactive                                       : never
21195 Account expires                                         : never
21196 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
21197 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
21198 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
21199 root@tjener:~#
21200 </pre></blockquote>
21201
21202 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
21203 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
21204 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
21205
21206 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
21207 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
21208
21209 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
21210 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21211
21212 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
21213 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
21214 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
21215 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
21216 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
21217 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
21218 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
21219
21220 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
21221 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
21222 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
21223 change.</p>
21224
21225       </div>
21226       <div class="tags">
21227
21228
21229         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>.
21230
21231
21232       </div>
21233     </div>
21234     <div class="padding"></div>
21235
21236     <div class="entry">
21237       <div class="title">
21238         <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>
21239       </div>
21240       <div class="date">
21241         28th April 2010
21242       </div>
21243       <div class="body">
21244         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
21245 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
21246 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
21247 and go.</p>
21248
21249 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
21250 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
21251 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
21252 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
21253
21254 <ul>
21255
21256  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
21257    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
21258    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
21259    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
21260    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
21261    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
21262    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
21263    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
21264    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
21265    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
21266    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
21267    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
21268
21269  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
21270    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
21271    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
21272    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
21273    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
21274    or the Fedora developed
21275    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
21276    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
21277
21278  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
21279    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
21280    directory, using unison.</li>
21281
21282  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
21283    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
21284    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
21285    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
21286    implemented.</li>
21287
21288  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
21289    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
21290
21291  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
21292    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
21293    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
21294
21295 </ul>
21296
21297 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
21298 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
21299 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
21300 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
21301 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
21302 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
21303 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
21304 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
21305 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
21306
21307 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21308 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21309
21310       </div>
21311       <div class="tags">
21312
21313
21314         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>.
21315
21316
21317       </div>
21318     </div>
21319     <div class="padding"></div>
21320
21321     <div class="entry">
21322       <div class="title">
21323         <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>
21324       </div>
21325       <div class="date">
21326         19th April 2010
21327       </div>
21328       <div class="body">
21329         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
21330 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
21331 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
21332 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
21333 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
21334 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
21335 restrictions on the web, for example from
21336 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
21337 epub-version from
21338 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
21339 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
21340 strongly recommend this book.</p>
21341
21342       </div>
21343       <div class="tags">
21344
21345
21346         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>.
21347
21348
21349       </div>
21350     </div>
21351     <div class="padding"></div>
21352
21353     <div class="entry">
21354       <div class="title">
21355         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
21356       </div>
21357       <div class="date">
21358         14th April 2010
21359       </div>
21360       <div class="body">
21361         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
21362 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
21363 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
21364 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
21365 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
21366 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
21367 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
21368 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
21369 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
21370
21371 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
21372 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
21373 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
21374 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
21375 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
21376
21377 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
21378 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
21379
21380 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
21381 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
21382 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
21383 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
21384 to work properly.</p>
21385
21386 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
21387 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
21388 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
21389 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
21390 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
21391 time.</p>
21392
21393 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
21394 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
21395 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
21396 up in a few days.</p>
21397
21398       </div>
21399       <div class="tags">
21400
21401
21402         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>.
21403
21404
21405       </div>
21406     </div>
21407     <div class="padding"></div>
21408
21409     <div class="entry">
21410       <div class="title">
21411         <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>
21412       </div>
21413       <div class="date">
21414          6th March 2010
21415       </div>
21416       <div class="body">
21417         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
21418 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
21419 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
21420 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
21421 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
21422 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
21423
21424 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
21425 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
21426 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
21427 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
21428
21429 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
21430 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
21431 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
21432 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
21433 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
21434 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
21435
21436       </div>
21437       <div class="tags">
21438
21439
21440         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>.
21441
21442
21443       </div>
21444     </div>
21445     <div class="padding"></div>
21446
21447     <div class="entry">
21448       <div class="title">
21449         <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>
21450       </div>
21451       <div class="date">
21452         11th February 2010
21453       </div>
21454       <div class="body">
21455         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
21456 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
21457 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
21458 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
21459 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
21460 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
21461 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
21462
21463 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
21464
21465 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
21466 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
21467 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
21468 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
21469
21470       </div>
21471       <div class="tags">
21472
21473
21474         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>.
21475
21476
21477       </div>
21478     </div>
21479     <div class="padding"></div>
21480
21481     <div class="entry">
21482       <div class="title">
21483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
21484       </div>
21485       <div class="date">
21486         27th January 2010
21487       </div>
21488       <div class="body">
21489         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
21490 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
21491 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
21492 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
21493 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
21494 further.</p>
21495
21496 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
21497 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
21498 configured to be a server for the
21499 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
21500 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
21501 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
21502 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
21503 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
21504 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
21505 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
21506 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
21507 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
21508 and Nagios configuration.</p>
21509
21510 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
21511 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
21512 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
21513 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
21514
21515 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
21516 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
21517 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
21518 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
21519 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
21520 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
21521 the machine.</p>
21522
21523 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
21524 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
21525 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
21526 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
21527
21528 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
21529 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
21530 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
21531 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
21532 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
21533 everything is taken care of.</p>
21534
21535       </div>
21536       <div class="tags">
21537
21538
21539         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>.
21540
21541
21542       </div>
21543     </div>
21544     <div class="padding"></div>
21545
21546     <div class="entry">
21547       <div class="title">
21548         <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>
21549       </div>
21550       <div class="date">
21551         12th August 2009
21552       </div>
21553       <div class="body">
21554         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
21555 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
21556 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
21557 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
21558
21559 <table>
21560 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21561 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21562 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
21563 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
21564 </table>
21565
21566 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
21567 got these numbers:</p>
21568
21569 <table>
21570 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21571 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
21572 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
21573 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
21574 </table>
21575
21576 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
21577
21578 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
21579 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
21580 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
21581 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
21582 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
21583
21584
21585 <table>
21586 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21587 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21588 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
21589 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
21590 </table>
21591
21592 <p>And with 'site:no':
21593
21594 <table>
21595 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21596 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
21597 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
21598 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
21599 </table>
21600
21601 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
21602 numbers.</p>
21603
21604       </div>
21605       <div class="tags">
21606
21607
21608         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>.
21609
21610
21611       </div>
21612     </div>
21613     <div class="padding"></div>
21614
21615     <div class="entry">
21616       <div class="title">
21617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
21618       </div>
21619       <div class="date">
21620          8th August 2009
21621       </div>
21622       <div class="body">
21623         <p>According to <a
21624 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
21625 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
21626 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
21627 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
21628 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
21629 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
21630 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
21631 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
21632 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
21633 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
21634
21635 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
21636 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
21637 seminar this autumn.</p>
21638
21639       </div>
21640       <div class="tags">
21641
21642
21643         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>.
21644
21645
21646       </div>
21647     </div>
21648     <div class="padding"></div>
21649
21650     <div class="entry">
21651       <div class="title">
21652         <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>
21653       </div>
21654       <div class="date">
21655         27th July 2009
21656       </div>
21657       <div class="body">
21658         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
21659 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
21660 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
21661 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
21662 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
21663 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
21664 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
21665
21666 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
21667 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
21668 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
21669
21670       </div>
21671       <div class="tags">
21672
21673
21674         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>.
21675
21676
21677       </div>
21678     </div>
21679     <div class="padding"></div>
21680
21681     <div class="entry">
21682       <div class="title">
21683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
21684       </div>
21685       <div class="date">
21686         22nd July 2009
21687       </div>
21688       <div class="body">
21689         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
21690 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
21691 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
21692 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
21693 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
21694 the package up to date.</p>
21695
21696 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
21697 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
21698 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
21699 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
21700 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
21701 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
21702 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
21703 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
21704 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
21705 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
21706 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
21707 working on the future release.</p>
21708
21709 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
21710 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
21711
21712       </div>
21713       <div class="tags">
21714
21715
21716         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>.
21717
21718
21719       </div>
21720     </div>
21721     <div class="padding"></div>
21722
21723     <div class="entry">
21724       <div class="title">
21725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
21726       </div>
21727       <div class="date">
21728         24th June 2009
21729       </div>
21730       <div class="body">
21731         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
21732 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
21733 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
21734 funded
21735 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
21736 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
21737 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
21738 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
21739 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
21740 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
21741
21742 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
21743 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
21744 boot:</p>
21745
21746 <ul>
21747
21748 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
21749
21750 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
21751    clock is in UTC.</li>
21752
21753 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
21754    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21755    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
21756
21757 </ul>
21758
21759 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
21760 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
21761 Villegas</a>.
21762
21763 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
21764 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
21765 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
21766 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
21767 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
21768 using this.</p>
21769
21770 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
21771 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
21772 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
21773 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
21774 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
21775 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
21776 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
21777
21778       </div>
21779       <div class="tags">
21780
21781
21782         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>.
21783
21784
21785       </div>
21786     </div>
21787     <div class="padding"></div>
21788
21789     <div class="entry">
21790       <div class="title">
21791         <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>
21792       </div>
21793       <div class="date">
21794          2nd May 2009
21795       </div>
21796       <div class="body">
21797         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
21798 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
21799 do not yet know them.</p>
21800
21801 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
21802 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
21803 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
21804 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
21805 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
21806 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
21807 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
21808 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
21809 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
21810 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
21811 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
21812
21813 <p>The second one is
21814 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
21815 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
21816 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
21817 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
21818 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
21819 and the company behind it is running
21820 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
21821 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
21822 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
21823 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
21824 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
21825 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
21826 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
21827 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
21828
21829 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
21830 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
21831 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
21832 surrounded by today.</p>
21833
21834       </div>
21835       <div class="tags">
21836
21837
21838         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>.
21839
21840
21841       </div>
21842     </div>
21843     <div class="padding"></div>
21844
21845     <div class="entry">
21846       <div class="title">
21847         <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>
21848       </div>
21849       <div class="date">
21850         28th April 2009
21851       </div>
21852       <div class="body">
21853         <p>Julien Blache
21854 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
21855 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
21856 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
21857 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
21858 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
21859 properties.</p>
21860
21861       </div>
21862       <div class="tags">
21863
21864
21865         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>.
21866
21867
21868       </div>
21869     </div>
21870     <div class="padding"></div>
21871
21872     <div class="entry">
21873       <div class="title">
21874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
21875       </div>
21876       <div class="date">
21877          5th April 2009
21878       </div>
21879       <div class="body">
21880         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
21881 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
21882 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
21883 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
21884 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
21885 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
21886 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
21887 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
21888
21889 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
21890 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
21891 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
21892   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21893   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
21894
21895 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
21896 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
21897 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
21898 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
21899
21900 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
21901 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
21902 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
21903 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
21904
21905 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
21906 set -e
21907 URL="$1"
21908 SAVEFILE="$2"
21909 DURATION="$3"
21910 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
21911   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21912   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
21913 pid=$!
21914 sleep $DURATION
21915 kill $pid
21916 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
21917
21918       </div>
21919       <div class="tags">
21920
21921
21922         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>.
21923
21924
21925       </div>
21926     </div>
21927     <div class="padding"></div>
21928
21929     <div class="entry">
21930       <div class="title">
21931         <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>
21932       </div>
21933       <div class="date">
21934         30th March 2009
21935       </div>
21936       <div class="body">
21937         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
21938 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
21939 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
21940 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
21941 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
21942 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
21943 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
21944 application.</p>
21945
21946 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
21947 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
21948 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
21949 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
21950 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
21951 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
21952 blocked from doing so.</p>
21953
21954 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
21955 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
21956 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
21957 requirements change.</p>
21958
21959 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
21960 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
21961 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
21962
21963       </div>
21964       <div class="tags">
21965
21966
21967         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>.
21968
21969
21970       </div>
21971     </div>
21972     <div class="padding"></div>
21973
21974     <div class="entry">
21975       <div class="title">
21976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
21977       </div>
21978       <div class="date">
21979         29th March 2009
21980       </div>
21981       <div class="body">
21982         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
21983 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
21984 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
21985 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
21986 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
21987 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
21988 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
21989 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
21990 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
21991 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
21992 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
21993 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
21994 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
21995 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
21996 now. :)</p>
21997
21998       </div>
21999       <div class="tags">
22000
22001
22002         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>.
22003
22004
22005       </div>
22006     </div>
22007     <div class="padding"></div>
22008
22009     <div class="entry">
22010       <div class="title">
22011         <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>
22012       </div>
22013       <div class="date">
22014         29th March 2009
22015       </div>
22016       <div class="body">
22017         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
22018 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
22019 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
22020 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
22021 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
22022 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
22023
22024 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
22025 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
22026 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
22027 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
22028 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
22029 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
22030 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
22031 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
22032 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
22033 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
22034 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
22035 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
22036 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
22037
22038 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
22039 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
22040 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
22041 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
22042
22043 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
22044 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
22045
22046 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
22047 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
22048 new IETF work group?</p>
22049
22050       </div>
22051       <div class="tags">
22052
22053
22054         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>.
22055
22056
22057       </div>
22058     </div>
22059     <div class="padding"></div>
22060
22061     <div class="entry">
22062       <div class="title">
22063         <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>
22064       </div>
22065       <div class="date">
22066         28th February 2009
22067       </div>
22068       <div class="body">
22069         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
22070 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
22071 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
22072 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
22073 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
22074 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
22075 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
22076 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
22077 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
22078 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
22079 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
22080 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
22081 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
22082 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
22083 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
22084 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
22085 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
22086 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
22087 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
22088 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
22089 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
22090 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
22091 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
22092 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
22093 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
22094 machine.</p>
22095
22096 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
22097 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
22098 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
22099 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
22100 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
22101 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
22102 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
22103
22104 <pre>
22105 use LWP::Simple;
22106 use POSIX;
22107 use WWW::Mechanize;
22108 use Date::Parse;
22109 [...]
22110 sub get_support_info {
22111     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
22112     my $str;
22113
22114     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
22115         # fetch website from Dell support
22116         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";
22117         my $webpage = get($url);
22118         return undef unless ($webpage);
22119
22120         my $daysleft = -1;
22121         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
22122         foreach my $line (@lines) {
22123             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
22124             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22125             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
22126
22127             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
22128             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
22129             my $lastend = "";
22130             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
22131                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
22132
22133                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22134                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
22135                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22136                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
22137                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
22138                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
22139                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
22140             }
22141             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22142             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22143                 if ($lastend lt $today);
22144         }
22145     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
22146         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
22147         my $url =
22148             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
22149         $mech->get($url);
22150         my $fields = {
22151             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
22152             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
22153             'country' => 'NO',
22154             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
22155             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
22156         };
22157         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
22158                             fields      => $fields );
22159         # Next step is screen scraping
22160         my $content = $mech->content();
22161
22162         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22163         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
22164         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
22165         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
22166
22167         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22168
22169         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
22170             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
22171                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
22172             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
22173             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22174                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
22175             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22176                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
22177
22178             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
22179
22180             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22181                 if ($end lt $today);
22182         }
22183     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
22184         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
22185         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
22186         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
22187             my $content =
22188                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
22189             if ($content) {
22190                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22191                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
22192                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
22193                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
22194
22195                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
22196                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
22197
22198                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
22199
22200                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22201                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22202                     if ($end lt $today);
22203             }
22204         }
22205     }
22206     return $str;
22207 }
22208 </pre>
22209
22210 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
22211 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
22212 from dmidecode.</p>
22213
22214 <pre>
22215 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
22216                        "447707-B21");
22217 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
22218 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
22219                        "1234567");
22220 </pre>
22221
22222 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
22223 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
22224
22225 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
22226 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
22227 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
22228 do so.</p>
22229
22230       </div>
22231       <div class="tags">
22232
22233
22234         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>.
22235
22236
22237       </div>
22238     </div>
22239     <div class="padding"></div>
22240
22241     <div class="entry">
22242       <div class="title">
22243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
22244       </div>
22245       <div class="date">
22246         20th February 2009
22247       </div>
22248       <div class="body">
22249         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
22250 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
22251 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
22252 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
22253 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
22254 the "missing" computer.</p>
22255
22256 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
22257 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
22258 code blocks as defined in the
22259 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
22260 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
22261 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
22262 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
22263 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
22264 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
22265 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
22266 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
22267 codes.</p>
22268
22269 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
22270 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
22271 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
22272 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
22273 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
22274 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
22275
22276 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
22277 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
22278 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
22279 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
22280 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
22281 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
22282 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
22283 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
22284 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
22285 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
22286
22287 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
22288 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
22289 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
22290
22291       </div>
22292       <div class="tags">
22293
22294
22295         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>.
22296
22297
22298       </div>
22299     </div>
22300     <div class="padding"></div>
22301
22302     <div class="entry">
22303       <div class="title">
22304         <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>
22305       </div>
22306       <div class="date">
22307         17th January 2009
22308       </div>
22309       <div class="body">
22310         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
22311 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
22312 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
22313 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
22314 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
22315 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
22316 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
22317 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
22318 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
22319 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
22320 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
22321 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
22322 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
22323 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
22324
22325 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
22326 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
22327 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
22328 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
22329 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
22330 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
22331 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
22332 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
22333 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
22334 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
22335 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
22336 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
22337 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
22338 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
22339 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
22340 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
22341 playing when the download is done.</p>
22342
22343 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
22344 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
22345 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
22346 too.</p>
22347
22348 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
22349 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
22350 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
22351 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
22352
22353       </div>
22354       <div class="tags">
22355
22356
22357         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>.
22358
22359
22360       </div>
22361     </div>
22362     <div class="padding"></div>
22363
22364     <div class="entry">
22365       <div class="title">
22366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
22367       </div>
22368       <div class="date">
22369         28th December 2008
22370       </div>
22371       <div class="body">
22372         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
22373 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
22374 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
22375 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
22376 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
22377 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
22378 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
22379 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
22380 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
22381 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
22382 source, sink and mixer applications and
22383 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
22384 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
22385 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
22386 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
22387 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
22388 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
22389 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
22390 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
22391 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
22392
22393 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
22394 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
22395 larger stick as well.</p>
22396
22397       </div>
22398       <div class="tags">
22399
22400
22401         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>.
22402
22403
22404       </div>
22405     </div>
22406     <div class="padding"></div>
22407
22408     <div class="entry">
22409       <div class="title">
22410         <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>
22411       </div>
22412       <div class="date">
22413          7th December 2008
22414       </div>
22415       <div class="body">
22416         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
22417 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
22418 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
22419 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
22420 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
22421 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
22422 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
22423 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
22424
22425 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
22426 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
22427 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
22428 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
22429 of these cards.</p>
22430
22431       </div>
22432       <div class="tags">
22433
22434
22435         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>.
22436
22437
22438       </div>
22439     </div>
22440     <div class="padding"></div>
22441
22442     <div class="entry">
22443       <div class="title">
22444         <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>
22445       </div>
22446       <div class="date">
22447         25th November 2008
22448       </div>
22449       <div class="body">
22450         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
22451 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
22452 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
22453 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
22454 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
22455 notes are available on
22456 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
22457 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
22458 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
22459 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
22460 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
22461 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
22462 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
22463 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
22464 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
22465
22466 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
22467 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
22468
22469       </div>
22470       <div class="tags">
22471
22472
22473         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>.
22474
22475
22476       </div>
22477     </div>
22478     <div class="padding"></div>
22479
22480     <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>
22481     <div id="sidebar">
22482
22483
22484
22485 <h2>Archive</h2>
22486 <ul>
22487
22488 <li>2015
22489 <ul>
22490
22491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22492
22493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22494
22495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
22496
22497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
22498
22499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (1)</a></li>
22500
22501 </ul></li>
22502
22503 <li>2014
22504 <ul>
22505
22506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22507
22508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
22509
22510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
22511
22512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22513
22514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
22515
22516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22517
22518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
22519
22520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
22521
22522 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22523
22524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
22525
22526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22527
22528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
22529
22530 </ul></li>
22531
22532 <li>2013
22533 <ul>
22534
22535 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
22536
22537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
22538
22539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
22540
22541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
22542
22543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22544
22545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
22546
22547 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22548
22549 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22550
22551 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22552
22553 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
22554
22555 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
22556
22557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22558
22559 </ul></li>
22560
22561 <li>2012
22562 <ul>
22563
22564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22565
22566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
22567
22568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
22569
22570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
22571
22572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
22573
22574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
22575
22576 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
22577
22578 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22579
22580 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
22581
22582 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
22583
22584 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
22585
22586 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22587
22588 </ul></li>
22589
22590 <li>2011
22591 <ul>
22592
22593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
22594
22595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22596
22597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
22598
22599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22600
22601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22602
22603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22604
22605 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22606
22607 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22608
22609 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
22610
22611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22612
22613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22614
22615 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
22616
22617 </ul></li>
22618
22619 <li>2010
22620 <ul>
22621
22622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22623
22624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
22625
22626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
22627
22628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
22629
22630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22631
22632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
22633
22634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
22635
22636 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
22637
22638 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
22639
22640 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
22641
22642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
22643
22644 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
22645
22646 </ul></li>
22647
22648 <li>2009
22649 <ul>
22650
22651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
22652
22653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
22654
22655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
22656
22657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
22658
22659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22660
22661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
22662
22663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
22664
22665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22666
22667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
22668
22669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22670
22671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22672
22673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22674
22675 </ul></li>
22676
22677 <li>2008
22678 <ul>
22679
22680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
22681
22682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22683
22684 </ul></li>
22685
22686 </ul>
22687
22688
22689
22690 <h2>Tags</h2>
22691 <ul>
22692
22693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
22694
22695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
22696
22697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
22698
22699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
22700
22701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
22702
22703  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
22704
22705  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
22706
22707  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
22708
22709  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (109)</a></li>
22710
22711  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
22712
22713  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
22714
22715  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
22716
22717  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (13)</a></li>
22718
22719  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
22720
22721  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (276)</a></li>
22722
22723  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
22724
22725  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
22726
22727  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (15)</a></li>
22728
22729  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
22730
22731  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (14)</a></li>
22732
22733  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
22734
22735  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
22736
22737  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
22738
22739  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
22740
22741  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
22742
22743  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
22744
22745  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
22746
22747  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
22748
22749  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (32)</a></li>
22750
22751  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (260)</a></li>
22752
22753  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (176)</a></li>
22754
22755  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (16)</a></li>
22756
22757  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
22758
22759  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (51)</a></li>
22760
22761  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (84)</a></li>
22762
22763  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
22764
22765  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
22766
22767  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
22768
22769  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
22770
22771  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
22772
22773  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
22774
22775  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
22776
22777  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
22778
22779  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
22780
22781  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
22782
22783  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
22784
22785  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (46)</a></li>
22786
22787  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
22788
22789  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
22790
22791  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (31)</a></li>
22792
22793  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
22794
22795  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
22796
22797  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
22798
22799  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (50)</a></li>
22800
22801  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
22802
22803  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (35)</a></li>
22804
22805 </ul>
22806
22807
22808     </div>
22809     <p style="text-align: right">
22810  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
22811 </p>
22812
22813   </body>
22814 </html>