blog/tags/debian/debian.rss

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   2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Fri, 3 Jul 2015 07:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
  15 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
  16 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
  17 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
  18 flickering.&lt;/p&gt;
  19
  20 &lt;p&gt;My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
  21 still as
  22 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;I
  23 described them in 2013&lt;/a&gt;.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
  24 good help from
  25 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353&quot;&gt;prisjakt.no&lt;/a&gt;
  26 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
  27 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
  28 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
  29 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
  30 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
  31 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
  32 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
  33 deteriorated since X41.&lt;/p&gt;
  34
  35 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
  36 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
  37 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
  38 have suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;
  39 </description>
  40         </item>
  41
  42         <item>
  43                 <title>How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</title>
  44                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</link>
  45                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</guid>
  46                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  47                 <description>&lt;p&gt;By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
  48 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
  49 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
  50 courtesy of
  51 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html&quot;&gt;Erich
  52 Schubert&lt;/a&gt; and
  53 &lt;a href=&quot;http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/&quot;&gt;Simon
  54 McVittie&lt;/a&gt;.
  55
  56 &lt;p&gt;If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
  57 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
  58 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit&lt;/tt&gt; with this content before
  59 you upgrade:&lt;/p&gt;
  60
  61 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  62 Package: systemd-sysv
  63 Pin: release o=Debian
  64 Pin-Priority: -1
  65 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
  66
  67 &lt;p&gt;This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
  68 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
  69 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
  70 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
  71 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.&lt;/p&gt;
  72
  73 &lt;p&gt;If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
  74 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
  75 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
  76 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
  77 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
  78 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
  79
  80 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  81 preseed/late_command=&quot;in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core&quot;
  82 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
  83
  84 &lt;p&gt;Next, the line to use in a preseed file:&lt;/p&gt;
  85
  86 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  87 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
  88 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
  89
  90 &lt;p&gt;One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
  91 the sysvinit-core package.&lt;/p&gt;
  92
  93 &lt;p&gt;I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
  94 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
  95 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
  96 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
  97 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
  98 Jessie is released.&lt;/p&gt;
  99
 100 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 101 &lt;ahref=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg&quot;&gt;a
 102 blog post by Torsten Glaser&lt;/a&gt;, added --purge to the preseed
 103 line.&lt;/p&gt;
 104 </description>
 105         </item>
 106
 107         <item>
 108                 <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
 109                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
 110                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
 111                 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
 112                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 113 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 114 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.&lt;/p&gt;
 115
 116 &lt;p&gt;A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 117 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 118 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 119 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 120 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 121 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 122 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 123 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html&quot;&gt;proposed
 124 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October&lt;/a&gt; and got a
 125 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 126 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 127 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 128 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP&quot;&gt;the
 129 Mailpile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dee.su/cables&quot;&gt;the Cables&lt;/a&gt; systems
 130 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.&lt;/p&gt;
 131
 132 &lt;p&gt;To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 133 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 134 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 135 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 136 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 137 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 138 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 139 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 140 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 141 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 142 were fairly easy, and
 143 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp&quot;&gt;the
 144 source code for the Debian package&lt;/a&gt; is available from github.  I
 145 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 146 useful approach.&lt;/p&gt;
 147
 148 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 149 mail system installed (or run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get purge exim4-config&lt;/tt&gt; to
 150 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 151 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 152 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service&lt;/tt&gt; and follow
 153 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 154 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 155 this:&lt;/p&gt;
 156
 157 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 158 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 159   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 160 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 161
 162 &lt;p&gt;This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 163 address with your own address to test your server. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 164
 165 &lt;p&gt;The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 166 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 167 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 168 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 169 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 170 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 171 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 172 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 173 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 174 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 175 system.&lt;/p&gt;
 176
 177 &lt;p&gt;Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 178 &lt;tt&gt;fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion&lt;/tt&gt; mail address, deliverable over
 179 SMTorP. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 180 </description>
 181         </item>
 182
 183         <item>
 184                 <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
 185                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
 186                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
 187                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 188                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 189 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 190 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 191 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 192 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 193 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 194 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 195 &lt;a href=&quot;http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin&quot;&gt;the
 196 listadmin program&lt;/a&gt;.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 197 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 198 lists I recently took over:&lt;/p&gt;
 199
 200 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 201 % time listadmin xiph
 202 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 203 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 204
 205 real    0m1.709s
 206 user    0m0.232s
 207 sys     0m0.012s
 208 %
 209 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 210
 211 &lt;p&gt;In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 212 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 213 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 214 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 215 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 216 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 217 program.&lt;/p&gt;
 218
 219 &lt;p&gt;If you install
 220 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin&quot;&gt;the listadmin
 221 package&lt;/a&gt; from Debian and create a file &lt;tt&gt;~/.listadmin.ini&lt;/tt&gt;
 222 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:&lt;/p&gt;
 223
 224 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 225 username username@example.org
 226 spamlevel 23
 227 default discard
 228 discard_if_reason &quot;Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list.&quot;
 229
 230 password secret
 231 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 232 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 233
 234 password hidden
 235 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 236 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 237
 238 &lt;p&gt;There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 239 learn the details.&lt;/p&gt;
 240
 241 &lt;p&gt;If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 242 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 243 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 244 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:&lt;/p&gt;
 245
 246 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 247 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 248 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 249
 250 &lt;p&gt;If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 251 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 252 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 253 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 254 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 255 email.&lt;/p&gt;
 256
 257 &lt;p&gt;Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 258 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 259 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 260 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 261 software.&lt;/p&gt;
 262
 263 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 264 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 265 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 266
 267 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-27: Added missing &#39;username&#39; statement in
 268 configuration example.  Also, I&#39;ve been told that the
 269 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 270 sure why.&lt;/p&gt;
 271 </description>
 272         </item>
 273
 274         <item>
 275                 <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
 276                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
 277                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
 278                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
 279                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 280 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 281 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 282 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 283 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
 284 package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 285 to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;
 286
 287 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 288 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 289 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 290 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 291 of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;
 292
 293 &lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 294 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 295 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 296 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 297 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 298 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 299 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 300 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 301 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 302 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
 303
 304 &lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 305 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 306 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 307 hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
 308
 309 &lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 310 firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;
 311
 312 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 313 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 314 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 315 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 316
 317 &lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 318 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 319 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 320 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 321 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 322 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 323 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 324 implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
 325
 326 &lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 327 this recipe work for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 328
 329 &lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 330 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 331 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 332 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 333 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;
 334
 335 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 336 Task: isenkram-packages
 337 Section: hardware
 338 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 339  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 340  proposed.
 341 Test-new-install: show show
 342 Relevance: 8
 343 Packages: for-current-hardware
 344
 345 Task: isenkram-firmware
 346 Section: hardware
 347 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 348  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 349  packages are proposed.
 350 Test-new-install: mark show
 351 Relevance: 8
 352 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 353 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 354
 355 &lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 356 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 357 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 358 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 359 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 360
 361 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 362 #!/bin/sh
 363 #
 364 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 365 export PATH
 366 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 367 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 368
 369 &lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 370 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 371
 372 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 373 installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 374 --new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 375 install.&lt;/p&gt;
 376
 377 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
 378 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 379 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
 380 </description>
 381         </item>
 382
 383         <item>
 384                 <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
 385                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
 386                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
 387                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 388                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 389 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 390 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 391 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:&lt;/p&gt;
 392
 393 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 394
 395 &lt;p&gt;If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 396 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://revealingerrors.com/&quot;&gt;errors can reveal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 398 </description>
 399         </item>
 400
 401         <item>
 402                 <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
 403                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
 404                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
 405                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 406                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
 407 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 408 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 409 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 410 Dibb.&lt;/p&gt;
 411
 412 &lt;p&gt;I just wrapped up
 413 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/&quot;&gt;a
 414 new lsdvd release&lt;/a&gt;, available in git or from
 415 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the
 416 download page&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 417 0.17.&lt;/p&gt;
 418
 419 &lt;ul&gt;
 420
 421  &lt;li&gt;Ignore &#39;phantom&#39; audio, subtitle tracks&lt;/li&gt;
 422  &lt;li&gt;Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 423    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection&lt;/li&gt;
 424  &lt;li&gt;Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles&lt;/li&gt;
 425  &lt;li&gt;Fix pallete display of first entry&lt;/li&gt;
 426  &lt;li&gt;Fix include orders&lt;/li&gt;
 427  &lt;li&gt;Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway&lt;/li&gt;
 428  &lt;li&gt;Fix the chapter count&lt;/li&gt;
 429  &lt;li&gt;Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 430    the palette size is the same.&lt;/li&gt;
 431  &lt;li&gt;Fix array printing.&lt;/li&gt;
 432  &lt;li&gt;Correct subsecond calculations.&lt;/li&gt;
 433  &lt;li&gt;Add sector information to the output format.&lt;/li&gt;
 434  &lt;li&gt;Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 435    with more GCC compiler warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
 436
 437 &lt;/ul&gt;
 438
 439 &lt;p&gt;This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 440 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 441 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 442 </description>
 443         </item>
 444
 445         <item>
 446                 <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
 447                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
 448                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
 449                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 450                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 451 project&lt;/a&gt; provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 452 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 453 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 454 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 455 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 456 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 457 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 458 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 459 future.  The
 460 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;current
 461 status&lt;/a&gt; can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 462 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 463 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 464 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.&lt;/p&gt;
 465
 466 &lt;p&gt;First, download the test ISO via
 467 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;ftp&lt;/a&gt;,
 468 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;http&lt;/a&gt;
 469 or rsync (use
 470 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 471 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 472 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 473 install with some tweaking.&lt;/p&gt;
 474
 475 &lt;p&gt;When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 476 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run&lt;/p&gt;
 477
 478 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 479 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 480 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 481
 482 &lt;p&gt;and add &#39;exit 0&#39; as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 483 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 484 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 485 due to a known bug in eatmydata.&lt;/p&gt;
 486
 487 &lt;p&gt;When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 488 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 489 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 490 your need.&lt;/p&gt;
 491
 492 &lt;p&gt;If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 493 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 494 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 495 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 496 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 497 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 498 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 499 days.&lt;/p&gt;
 500
 501 &lt;p&gt;I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 502 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 503 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 504 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 505 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 506 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 507 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 508 provided in bug &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;#702711&lt;/a&gt;.
 509 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
 510
 511 &lt;p&gt;I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 512 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 513 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.&lt;/p&gt;
 514 </description>
 515         </item>
 516
 517         <item>
 518                 <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
 519                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
 520                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
 521                 <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 522                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd tool&lt;/a&gt;
 523 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
 524 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
 525 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
 526 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
 527 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
 528 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
 529 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
 530 get &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd&quot;&gt;an updated version
 531 into Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
 532 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
 533 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
 534 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.&lt;/p&gt;
 535
 536 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
 537 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
 538 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
 539 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
 540 I&#39;ve added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
 541 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
 542 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
 543 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/&quot;&gt;the git source&lt;/a&gt; and join
 544 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/&quot;&gt;the project mailing
 545 list&lt;/a&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 546 </description>
 547         </item>
 548
 549         <item>
 550                 <title>Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</title>
 551                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</link>
 552                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</guid>
 553                 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 554                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; installer could be
 555 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 556 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; using
 557 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 558 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 559 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/613428&quot;&gt;bug #613428&lt;/a&gt; about too
 560 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 561 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 562 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 563 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 564 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 565 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 566 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 567 relevant while the installer is running.&lt;/p&gt;
 568
 569 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 570 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 571 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 572 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 573 depend on the small and clever package
 574 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata&quot;&gt;eatmydata&lt;/a&gt;, which
 575 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 576 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 577 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 578 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 579 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 580 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 581 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 582 &quot;eatmydata&amp;nbsp;$program&amp;nbsp;$@&quot;, to get the same effect.
 583 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 584 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.&lt;/p&gt;
 585
 586 &lt;p&gt;The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 587 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 588 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 589 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 590 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 591 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 592 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 593 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 594 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 595 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 596 /var/log/syslog between the &quot;pkgsel: starting tasksel&quot; and the
 597 &quot;pkgsel: finishing up&quot; lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 598 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 599 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 600 dialog.&lt;/p&gt;
 601
 602 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
 603
 604 &lt;tr&gt;
 605 &lt;th&gt;Machine/setup&lt;/th&gt;
 606 &lt;th&gt;Original tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
 607 &lt;th&gt;Optimised tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
 608 &lt;th&gt;Reduction&lt;/th&gt;
 609 &lt;/tr&gt;
 610
 611 &lt;tr&gt;
 612 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
 613 &lt;td&gt;64 min (07:46-08:50)&lt;/td&gt;
 614 &lt;td&gt;&lt;44 min (11:27-12:11)&lt;/td&gt;
 615 &lt;td&gt;&gt;20 min 18%&lt;/td&gt;
 616 &lt;/tr&gt;
 617
 618 &lt;tr&gt;
 619 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
 620 &lt;td&gt;57 min (08:48-09:45)&lt;/td&gt;
 621 &lt;td&gt;34 min (07:43-08:17)&lt;/td&gt;
 622 &lt;td&gt;23 min 40%&lt;/td&gt;
 623 &lt;/tr&gt;
 624
 625 &lt;tr&gt;
 626 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
 627 &lt;td&gt;22 min (10:37-10:59)&lt;/td&gt;
 628 &lt;td&gt;11 min (11:16-11:27)&lt;/td&gt;
 629 &lt;td&gt;11 min 50%&lt;/td&gt;
 630 &lt;/tr&gt;
 631
 632 &lt;tr&gt;
 633 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
 634 &lt;td&gt;6 min (08:19-08:25)&lt;/td&gt;
 635 &lt;td&gt;4 min (08:04-08:08)&lt;/td&gt;
 636 &lt;td&gt;2 min 33%&lt;/td&gt;
 637 &lt;/tr&gt;
 638
 639 &lt;tr&gt;
 640 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE&lt;/td&gt;
 641 &lt;td&gt;19 min (09:21-09:40)&lt;/td&gt;
 642 &lt;td&gt;15 min (10:25-10:40)&lt;/td&gt;
 643 &lt;td&gt;4 min 21%&lt;/td&gt;
 644 &lt;/tr&gt;
 645
 646 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 647
 648 &lt;p&gt;The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 649 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 650 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 651 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 652 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 653 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
 654
 655 &lt;p&gt;The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 656 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/&quot;&gt;Debian
 657 Installer&lt;/a&gt;, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 658 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 659 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 660 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
 661 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
 662 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
 663 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
 664 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
 665 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
 666 for the entire installation.&lt;/p&gt;
 667
 668 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve implemented this in the
 669 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install&quot;&gt;debian-edu-install&lt;/a&gt;
 670 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
 671 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
 672 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
 673 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 674
 675 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 676 #!/bin/sh
 677 set -e
 678 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 679 info() {
 680     logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;info: $*&quot;
 681 }
 682 error() {
 683     logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;error: $*&quot;
 684 }
 685 override_install() {
 686     apt-install eatmydata || true
 687     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
 688         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 689             file=/usr/bin/$bin
 690             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
 691             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
 692                 info &quot;diverting $file using eatmydata&quot;
 693                 printf &quot;#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \&quot;\$@\&quot;\n&quot; \
 694                     &gt; /target$file.edu
 695                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
 696                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 697                     --rename --quiet --add $file
 698                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
 699             else
 700                 error &quot;unable to divert $file, as it is missing.&quot;
 701             fi
 702         done
 703     else
 704         error &quot;unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage&quot;
 705     fi
 706 }
 707
 708 override_install
 709 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 710
 711 &lt;p&gt;To clean up, another shell script should go into
 712 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
 713
 714 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 715 #! /bin/sh -e
 716 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 717 error() {
 718     logger -t my-finish-install &quot;error: $@&quot;
 719 }
 720 remove_install_override() {
 721     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 722         file=/usr/bin/$bin
 723         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
 724             rm /target$file
 725             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 726                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
 727             rm /target$file.edu
 728         else
 729             error &quot;Missing divert for $file.&quot;
 730         fi
 731     done
 732     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
 733 }
 734
 735 remove_install_override
 736 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 737
 738 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
 739 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
 740 finish-install.d scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
 741
 742 &lt;p&gt;By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
 743 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
 744 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
 745 depend on the side effects of the change.  I&#39;m not aware of any, but I
 746 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
 747 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
 748 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
 749 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
 750 everyone.&lt;/p&gt;
 751
 752 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
 753 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
 754 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;bug #702711&lt;/a&gt;.  An updated
 755 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
 756
 757 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
 758 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
 759 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
 760 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
 761 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.&lt;/p&gt;
 762
 763 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
 764 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/765738&quot;&gt;bug #765738&lt;/a&gt; in eatmydata only
 765 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
 766 optimization again.  If &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/768893&quot;&gt;unblock
 767 request 768893&lt;/a&gt; is accepted, it should be working again.&lt;/p&gt;
 768 </description>
 769         </item>
 770
 771         <item>
 772                 <title>Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</title>
 773                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</link>
 774                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</guid>
 775                 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
 776                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
 777 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; about
 778 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/&quot;&gt;the
 779 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt;, and was very happy to
 780 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
 781 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
 782 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
 783 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
 784 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
 785 those problems are gone now.&lt;/p&gt;
 786
 787 &lt;p&gt;Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
 788 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sks-keyservers.net/&quot;&gt;sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt; service
 789 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
 790 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
 791 better than what I have used so far. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 792
 793 &lt;p&gt;Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
 794 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
 795 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?&lt;/p&gt;
 796
 797 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&#39;ve updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
 798 line:&lt;/p&gt;
 799
 800 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 801 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
 802 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 803
 804 &lt;p&gt;With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
 805 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
 806 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
 807 keyserver automatically should their need it:&lt;/p&gt;
 808
 809 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 810 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
 811 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
 812 %
 813 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 814
 815 &lt;p&gt;Now if only
 816 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/&quot;&gt;the
 817 HKP lookup protocol&lt;/a&gt; supported finding signature paths, I would be
 818 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
 819 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
 820 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
 821 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
 822 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
 823 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
 824 for a future version of the protocol?&lt;/p&gt;
 825 </description>
 826         </item>
 827
 828         <item>
 829                 <title>From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</title>
 830                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</link>
 831                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</guid>
 832                 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 833                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 834 project&lt;/a&gt; provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
 835 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
 836 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
 837 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.&lt;/p&gt;
 838
 839 &lt;p&gt;One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
 840 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
 841 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
 842 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
 843 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
 844 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
 845 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
 846 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
 847 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
 848 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
 849 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
 850 goals.&lt;/p&gt;
 851
 852 &lt;p&gt;We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
 853 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;Debian
 854 wiki&lt;/a&gt;, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
 855 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
 856 for each chapter, and finally one &quot;collection page&quot; gluing all the
 857 chapters together into one large web page (aka
 858 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne&quot;&gt;the
 859 AllInOne page&lt;/a&gt;).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
 860 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
 861 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/&quot;&gt;MoinMoin&lt;/a&gt; installation on
 862 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
 863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;the Docbook format&lt;/a&gt;, we can fetch
 864 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
 865 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
 866 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
 867 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
 868 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
 869 using the &lt;tt&gt;documentation/scripts/get_manual&lt;/tt&gt; program, and the
 870 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
 871 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
 872 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
 873 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
 874 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
 875 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.&lt;/p&gt;
 876
 877 &lt;p&gt;But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
 878 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
 879 track the English original.  For this we use the
 880 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html&quot;&gt;poxml&lt;/a&gt; package,
 881 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
 882 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
 883 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
 884 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
 885 files), which the translations update with the native language
 886 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
 887 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
 888 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
 889 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
 890 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
 891 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
 892 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
 893 of the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;
 894
 895 &lt;p&gt;The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
 896 recommend using
 897 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/&quot;&gt;lokalize&lt;/a&gt;,
 898 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
 899 &lt;a href=&quot;http://pootle.translatehouse.org/&quot;&gt;Poodle&lt;/a&gt; or
 900 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.transifex.com/&quot;&gt;Transifex&lt;/a&gt;.  All we care about
 901 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
 902 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
 903 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;bug reports
 904 against the debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 905
 906 &lt;p&gt;One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
 907 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
 908 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
 909 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
 910 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
 911 translated images by storing translated versions in
 912 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
 913 package maintainers know more.&lt;/p&gt;
 914
 915 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
 916 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&quot;&gt;the content
 917 of the documentation packages on the web&lt;/a&gt;.  See for example the
 918 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf&quot;&gt;Italian
 919 PDF version&lt;/a&gt; or the
 920 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html&quot;&gt;German
 921 HTML version&lt;/a&gt;.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
 922 but perhaps it will be done in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
 923
 924 &lt;p&gt;To learn more, check out
 925 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html&quot;&gt;the
 926 debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;,
 927 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;the
 928 manual on the wiki&lt;/a&gt; and
 929 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations&quot;&gt;the
 930 translation instructions&lt;/a&gt; in the manual.&lt;/p&gt;
 931 </description>
 932         </item>
 933
 934         <item>
 935                 <title>Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</title>
 936                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</link>
 937                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</guid>
 938                 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
 939                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
 940 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
 941 So I implemented one, using
 942 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;my Isenkram
 943 package&lt;/a&gt;.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
 944 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
 945 &quot;Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)&quot;.  When you
 946 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
 947 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.&lt;p&gt;
 948
 949 &lt;p&gt;The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
 950 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
 951 packages to install.  The first part is in
 952 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
 953 this:&lt;/p&gt;
 954
 955 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 956 Task: isenkram
 957 Section: hardware
 958 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 959  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 960  proposed.
 961 Test-new-install: mark show
 962 Relevance: 8
 963 Packages: for-current-hardware
 964 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 965
 966 &lt;p&gt;The second part is in
 967 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
 968 this:&lt;/p&gt;
 969
 970 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 971 #!/bin/sh
 972 #
 973 (
 974     isenkram-lookup
 975     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 976 ) | sort -u
 977 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 978
 979 &lt;p&gt;All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
 980 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
 981 have installed on our machines.  I&#39;ve not been able to find a way to
 982 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
 983 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
 984 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.&lt;/p&gt;
 985
 986 &lt;p&gt;The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
 987 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
 988 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
 989 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
 990 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
 991 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/719837&quot;&gt;#719837&lt;/a&gt; and
 992 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/730704&quot;&gt;#730704&lt;/a&gt;).  The cause is in
 993 the python-apt code (bug
 994 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/745487&quot;&gt;#745487&lt;/a&gt;), but using a
 995 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
 996 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
 997 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
 998 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
 999 unstable today.&lt;/p&gt;
1000
1001 &lt;p&gt;I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1002 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1003 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1004 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1005 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt;, and
1006 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive&quot;&gt;GSoC
1007 project&lt;/a&gt; will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1008 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1009 start using the information when it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;
1010
1011 &lt;p&gt;If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1012 add a &quot;Xb-Modaliases&quot; header to your control file like I did in
1013 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;the pymissile
1014 package&lt;/a&gt; or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1015 package.  See also
1016 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;all my
1017 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt; for details on the notation.  I expect
1018 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1019 moment I got no better place to store it.&lt;/p&gt;
1020 </description>
1021         </item>
1022
1023         <item>
1024                 <title>FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</title>
1025                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</link>
1026                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</guid>
1027                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1028                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
1029 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1030 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1031 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1032 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1033 today a major mile stone was reached.&lt;/p&gt;
1034
1035 &lt;p&gt;Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1036 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1037 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1038 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1039 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1040 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1041 build everything directly from Debian. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1042
1043 &lt;p&gt;Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1044 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;,
1045 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt;,
1046 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite&quot;&gt;pagekite&lt;/a&gt;,
1047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor&quot;&gt;tor&lt;/a&gt;,
1048 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;,
1049 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud&quot;&gt;owncloud&lt;/a&gt; and
1050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq&quot;&gt;dnsmasq&lt;/a&gt;.  There
1051 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1052 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1053 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie&quot;&gt;check out
1054 the manual&lt;/a&gt; and help us improve it.&lt;/p&gt;
1055
1056 &lt;p&gt;To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1057 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1058 become root:&lt;/p&gt;
1059
1060 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1061 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1062   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1063   u-boot-tools
1064 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1065   freedom-maker
1066 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1067 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1068
1069 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1070 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1071 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1072 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1073 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1074 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1075 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1076 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.&lt;/p&gt;
1077
1078 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1079 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1080 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
1081
1082 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1083 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
1084 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1085
1086 &lt;p&gt;I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1087 it still work.&lt;/p&gt;
1088
1089 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1090 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1091 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1092 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1093 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1094 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1095 be run from the plinth web interface.&lt;/p&gt;
1096
1097 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1098 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1099 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
1100 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
1101 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
1102 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
1103 </description>
1104         </item>
1105
1106         <item>
1107                 <title>S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</title>
1108                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</link>
1109                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</guid>
1110                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1111                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1112 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1113 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1114 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1115 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1116 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1117 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1118 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1119 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1120 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1121 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1122 have looked at a system called
1123 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/&quot;&gt;S3QL&lt;/a&gt;, a locally
1124 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.&lt;/p&gt;
1125
1126 &lt;p&gt;S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1127 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1128 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1129 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1130 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1131 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1132 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1133 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1134 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1135 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1136 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1137 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1138 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.&lt;/p&gt;
1139
1140 &lt;p&gt;It is simple to use.  I&#39;m using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1141 package is included already.  So to get started, run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get
1142 install s3ql&lt;/tt&gt;.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1143 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1144 &lt;a href=&quot;https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy&quot;&gt;how
1145 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service&lt;/a&gt;, because I trust the laws
1146 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1147 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1148 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1149 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage&quot;&gt;S3QL
1150 Filesystem for HPC Storage&lt;/a&gt; by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1151 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1152 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1153 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1154 account.&lt;/p&gt;
1155
1156 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1157 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1158 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1159 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1160 I&#39;ll refer to it as &lt;tt&gt;bucket-name&lt;/tt&gt; below.  In addition, one need
1161 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1162 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1163
1164 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1165 [s3c]
1166 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1167 backend-login: API-login
1168 backend-password: API-password
1169 fs-passphrase: local-password
1170 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1171
1172 &lt;p&gt;I create my local passphrase using &lt;tt&gt;pwget 50&lt;/tt&gt; or similar,
1173 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1174 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1175 details and password to create it:&lt;/p&gt;
1176
1177 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1178 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1179 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1180   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1181 Enter backend login:
1182 Enter backend password:
1183 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user&#39;s guide, especially
1184 the &#39;Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data&#39; section.
1185 Enter encryption password:
1186 Confirm encryption password:
1187 Generating random encryption key...
1188 Creating metadata tables...
1189 Dumping metadata...
1190 ..objects..
1191 ..blocks..
1192 ..inodes..
1193 ..inode_blocks..
1194 ..symlink_targets..
1195 ..names..
1196 ..contents..
1197 ..ext_attributes..
1198 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1199 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1200 # &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1201
1202 &lt;p&gt;The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1203
1204 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1205 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1206   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1207 Using 4 upload threads.
1208 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1209 Reading metadata...
1210 ..objects..
1211 ..blocks..
1212 ..inodes..
1213 ..inode_blocks..
1214 ..symlink_targets..
1215 ..names..
1216 ..contents..
1217 ..ext_attributes..
1218 Mounting filesystem...
1219 # df -h /s3ql
1220 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1221 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1222 #
1223 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1224
1225 &lt;p&gt;The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1226 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1227 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1228 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1229 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1230 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1231
1232 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1233 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1234 #
1235 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1236
1237 &lt;p&gt;There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1238 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1239 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the &quot;already
1240 mounted&quot; flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1241 file system:&lt;/p&gt;
1242
1243 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1244 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1245 Using cached metadata.
1246 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1247 Checking DB integrity...
1248 Creating temporary extra indices...
1249 Checking lost+found...
1250 Checking cached objects...
1251 Checking names (refcounts)...
1252 Checking contents (names)...
1253 Checking contents (inodes)...
1254 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1255 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1256 Checking objects (backend)...
1257 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1258 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1259 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1260 Checking objects (sizes)...
1261 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1262 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1263 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1264 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1265 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1266 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1267 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1268 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1269 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1270 Checking directory reachability...
1271 Checking unix conventions...
1272 Checking referential integrity...
1273 Dropping temporary indices...
1274 Backing up old metadata...
1275 Dumping metadata...
1276 ..objects..
1277 ..blocks..
1278 ..inodes..
1279 ..inode_blocks..
1280 ..symlink_targets..
1281 ..names..
1282 ..contents..
1283 ..ext_attributes..
1284 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1285 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1286 #
1287 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1288
1289 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1290 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1291 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1292 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1293 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1294 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1295 Both were measured using &lt;tt&gt;dd&lt;/tt&gt;.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1296 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1297 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1298 working set.&lt;/p&gt;
1299
1300 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1301 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1302 busy:&lt;/p&gt;
1303
1304 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1305 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1306   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1307 Using 8 upload threads.
1308 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1309 #
1310 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1311
1312 &lt;p&gt;The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1313 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1314 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1315 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1316 s3qlctrl:
1317
1318 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1319 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1320 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1321 #
1322 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1323
1324 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1325 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1326 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1327 a report:&lt;/p&gt;
1328
1329 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1330 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1331 Directory entries:    9141
1332 Inodes:               9143
1333 Data blocks:          8851
1334 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1335 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1336 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1337 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1338 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1339 #
1340 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1341
1342 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1343 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1344 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.greenqloud.com/&quot;&gt;Greenqloud&lt;/a&gt;,
1345 &lt;a href=&quot;http://drive.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Drive&lt;/a&gt;,
1346 &lt;a href=&quot;http://aws.amazon.com/s3/&quot;&gt;Amazon S3 web serivces&lt;/a&gt;,
1347 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rackspace.com/&quot;&gt;Rackspace&lt;/a&gt; and
1348 &lt;a href=&quot;http://crowncloud.net/&quot;&gt;Crowncloud&lt;/A&gt;.  The latter even
1349 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1350 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1351 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1352 best.&lt;/p&gt;
1353
1354 &lt;p&gt;While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1355 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1356 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1357 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1358 poster is titled
1359 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf&quot;&gt;An
1360 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1361 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Hsing-Bung
1362 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1363 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
1364
1365 &lt;p&gt;Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1366 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1367 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1368 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;my
1370 test code to check file system semantics&lt;/a&gt;, I was happy to discover that
1371 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1372 directories, if one chooses to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
1373
1374 &lt;p&gt;If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1375 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1376 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tarsnap.com/&quot;&gt;Tarsnap service&lt;/a&gt;, which also
1377 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1378 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1379 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1380 only read from it.&lt;/p&gt;
1381
1382 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1383 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1384 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1385 </description>
1386         </item>
1387
1388         <item>
1389                 <title>Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</title>
1390                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</link>
1391                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</guid>
1392                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1393                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
1394 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware for
1395 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1396 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1397 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
1398 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1399 release (0.2).&lt;/p&gt;
1400
1401 &lt;p&gt;And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1402 new version will provide &quot;hard drive&quot; / SD card / USB stick images for
1403 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1404 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1405 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1406 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
1407 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
1408 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1409 and build using
1410 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
1411 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1412
1413 &lt;pre&gt;
1414 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1415   freedom-maker
1416 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1417   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1418   u-boot-tools
1419 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1420 &lt;/pre&gt;
1421
1422 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1423 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1424 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to &lt;a
1425 href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/741407&quot;&gt;a race condition in
1426 vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;, the build might fail without the patch to the
1427 kpartx call.&lt;/p&gt;
1428
1429 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1430 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1431 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
1432
1433 &lt;pre&gt;
1434 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
1435 &lt;/pre&gt;
1436
1437 &lt;p&gt;But note that due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/740673&quot;&gt;a
1438 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie&lt;/a&gt;, the installer will
1439 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
1440 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;apt-cdrom ident&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; process when it hang a few times during the
1441 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
1442 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.&lt;/p&gt;
1443
1444 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1445 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1446 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
1447 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
1448 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
1449 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
1450 </description>
1451         </item>
1452
1453         <item>
1454                 <title>New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</title>
1455                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</link>
1456                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</guid>
1457                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Feb 2014 21:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
1458                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1459 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1460 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  I called the project
1461 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1462 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/&quot;&gt;Hungry Programmer&lt;/a&gt; umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1463 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1464 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1465 proper home since then.&lt;/p&gt;
1466
1467 &lt;p&gt;Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1468 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1469 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1470 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Alioth&lt;/a&gt;, but did not have time
1471 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1472
1473 &lt;p&gt;After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1474 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1475 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1476 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1477 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1478 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1479 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&quot;&gt;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&lt;/a&gt;
1480 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1481 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html&quot;&gt;Debian Unstable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1482 </description>
1483         </item>
1484
1485         <item>
1486                 <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
1487                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
1488                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
1489                 <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1490                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1491 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1492 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1493 &lt;a href=&quot;https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html&quot;&gt;great
1494 Google Summer of Code work&lt;/a&gt; done last summer by Justus Winter to
1495 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1496 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1497 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&quot;&gt;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;,
1498 and started it using virt-manager.&lt;/p&gt;
1499
1500 &lt;p&gt;The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1501 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1502 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install&quot;&gt;the
1503 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page&lt;/a&gt; and ran these
1504 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1505 kvm internal DHCP server:&lt;/p&gt;
1506
1507 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1508 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
1509 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[p]finet/ { print $2}&#39;)
1510 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[d]evnode/ { print $2}&#39;)
1511 dhclient /dev/eth0
1512 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1513
1514 &lt;p&gt;After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1515 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1516 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.&lt;/p&gt;
1517
1518 &lt;p&gt;But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1519 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1520 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1521 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
1522 side.&lt;/p&gt;
1523
1524 &lt;p&gt;Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1525 stuff:&lt;/p&gt;
1526
1527 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1528 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
1529 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1530 EOF
1531 apt-get update
1532 apt-get dist-upgrade
1533 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1534     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1535 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1536 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1537
1538 &lt;p&gt;To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1539 &lt;tt&gt;reboot-hurd&lt;/tt&gt; instead of just &lt;tt&gt;reboot&lt;/tt&gt;, as there is not
1540 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1541 &#39;reboot&#39; command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1542 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1543 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1544 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
1545 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1546 ssh instead.
1547
1548 &lt;p&gt;Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1549 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1550 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1551 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
1552 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1553 adding this repository to the machine:&lt;/p&gt;
1554
1555 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1556 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
1557 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1558 EOF
1559 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1560
1561 &lt;p&gt;At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
1562 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
1563 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
1564 BTS.  This is the completely list of &quot;unofficial&quot; packages installed:&lt;/p&gt;
1565
1566 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1567 # aptitude search &#39;?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))&#39;
1568 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
1569 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
1570 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
1571 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
1572 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
1573 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
1574 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
1575 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
1576 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
1577 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
1578 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
1579 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
1580 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
1581 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
1582 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
1583 #
1584 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1585
1586 &lt;p&gt;All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
1587 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
1588 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
1589 command line stuff.&lt;p&gt;
1590 </description>
1591         </item>
1592
1593         <item>
1594                 <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
1595                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
1596                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
1597                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1598                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; is a nice tool to
1599 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
1600 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
1601 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
1602 the source.  The company behind it provide
1603 &lt;a href=&quot;https://scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;check of free software projects as
1604 a community service&lt;/a&gt;, and many hundred free software projects are
1605 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
1606 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
1607 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/&quot;&gt;gnash&lt;/a&gt; and
1608 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/&quot;&gt;ipmitool&lt;/a&gt;
1609 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
1610 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
1611 check, and decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179&quot;&gt;request
1612 checking of the chrpath project&lt;/a&gt;.  It was
1613 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
1614 these were real, mostly resource &quot;leak&quot; when the program detected an
1615 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
1616 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
1617 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
1618 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
1619 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel&quot;&gt;a
1620 mailing list for the chrpath developers&lt;/a&gt;, I decided it was time to
1621 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
1622
1623 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:&lt;/p&gt;
1624
1625 &lt;ul&gt;
1626
1627   &lt;li&gt;Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.&lt;/li&gt;
1628   &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.&lt;/li&gt;
1629   &lt;li&gt;Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.&lt;/li&gt;
1630
1631 &lt;/ul&gt;
1632
1633 &lt;p&gt;You can
1634 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
1635 new version 0.16 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1636 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1637 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1638 include a test suite check.&lt;/p&gt;
1639 </description>
1640         </item>
1641
1642         <item>
1643                 <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
1644                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
1645                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
1646                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1647                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
1648 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
1649 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
1650 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
1651 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
1652 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
1653 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
1654 is working on.  I checked the
1655 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
1656 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and
1657 &lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath&quot;&gt;Fedora&lt;/a&gt;
1658 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1659 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1660 These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
1661
1662 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:&lt;/p&gt;
1663
1664 &lt;ul&gt;
1665
1666   &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1667    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1668    up.&lt;/li&gt;
1669
1670   &lt;li&gt;Updated README with current URLs.&lt;/li&gt;
1671
1672   &lt;li&gt;Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1673    Matthias Klose.&lt;/li&gt;
1674
1675   &lt;li&gt;Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1676    Petr Machata found in Fedora.&lt;/li&gt;
1677
1678   &lt;li&gt;Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1679    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
1680    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.&lt;/li&gt;
1681
1682 &lt;/ul&gt;
1683
1684 &lt;p&gt;You can
1685 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
1686 new version 0.15 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1687 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1688 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1689 include a testsuite check.&lt;/p&gt;
1690 </description>
1691         </item>
1692
1693         <item>
1694                 <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
1695                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
1696                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
1697                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1698                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1699 &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147&quot;&gt;to get rid of huge
1700 init.d scripts&lt;/a&gt;, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1701 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1702 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:&lt;/p&gt;
1703
1704 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1705 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1706 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1707 # Provides:          rsyslog
1708 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1709 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1710 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1711 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1712 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1713 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1714 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1715 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1716 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1717 ### END INIT INFO
1718 DESC=&quot;enhanced syslogd&quot;
1719 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1720 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1721
1722 &lt;p&gt;Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1723 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1724 info/comments.&lt;/p&gt;
1725
1726 &lt;p&gt;How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1727 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1728
1729 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1730 #!/bin/sh
1731
1732 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1733 # Depend on lsb-base (&gt;= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1734 # and status_of_proc is working.
1735 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1736
1737 #
1738 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1739
1740 #
1741 do_start()
1742 {
1743         # Return
1744         #   0 if daemon has been started
1745         #   1 if daemon was already running
1746         #   2 if daemon could not be started
1747         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test &gt; /dev/null \
1748                 || return 1
1749         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1750                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
1751                 || return 2
1752         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1753         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1754         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1755 }
1756
1757 #
1758 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1759 #
1760 do_stop()
1761 {
1762         # Return
1763         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
1764         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
1765         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
1766         #   other if a failure occurred
1767         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1768         RETVAL=&quot;$?&quot;
1769         [ &quot;$RETVAL&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
1770         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1771         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1772         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1773         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1774         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
1775         # sleep for some time.
1776         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
1777         [ &quot;$?&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
1778         # Many daemons don&#39;t delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1779         rm -f $PIDFILE
1780         return &quot;$RETVAL&quot;
1781 }
1782
1783 #
1784 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1785 #
1786 do_reload() {
1787         #
1788         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1789         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1790         # then implement that here.
1791         #
1792         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1793         return 0
1794 }
1795
1796 SCRIPTNAME=$1
1797 scriptbasename=&quot;$(basename $1)&quot;
1798 echo &quot;SN: $scriptbasename&quot;
1799 if [ &quot;$scriptbasename&quot; != &quot;init-d-library&quot; ] ; then
1800     script=&quot;$1&quot;
1801     shift
1802     . $script
1803 else
1804     exit 0
1805 fi
1806
1807 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1808 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1809
1810 # Exit if the package is not installed
1811 #[ -x &quot;$DAEMON&quot; ] || exit 0
1812
1813 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1814 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] &amp;&amp; . /etc/default/$NAME
1815
1816 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1817 . /lib/init/vars.sh
1818
1819 case &quot;$1&quot; in
1820   start)
1821         [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Starting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
1822         do_start
1823         case &quot;$?&quot; in
1824                 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
1825                 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
1826         esac
1827         ;;
1828   stop)
1829         [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Stopping $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
1830         do_stop
1831         case &quot;$?&quot; in
1832                 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
1833                 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
1834         esac
1835         ;;
1836   status)
1837         status_of_proc &quot;$DAEMON&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot; &amp;&amp; exit 0 || exit $?
1838         ;;
1839   #reload|force-reload)
1840         #
1841         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1842         # and leave &#39;force-reload&#39; as an alias for &#39;restart&#39;.
1843         #
1844         #log_daemon_msg &quot;Reloading $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
1845         #do_reload
1846         #log_end_msg $?
1847         #;;
1848   restart|force-reload)
1849         #
1850         # If the &quot;reload&quot; option is implemented then remove the
1851         # &#39;force-reload&#39; alias
1852         #
1853         log_daemon_msg &quot;Restarting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
1854         do_stop
1855         case &quot;$?&quot; in
1856           0|1)
1857                 do_start
1858                 case &quot;$?&quot; in
1859                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
1860                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
1861                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
1862                 esac
1863                 ;;
1864           *)
1865                 # Failed to stop
1866                 log_end_msg 1
1867                 ;;
1868         esac
1869         ;;
1870   *)
1871         echo &quot;Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}&quot; &gt;&amp;2
1872         exit 3
1873         ;;
1874 esac
1875
1876 :
1877 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1878
1879 &lt;p&gt;It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1880 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1881 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
1882 optimize it nor make it more robust either.&lt;/p&gt;
1883
1884 &lt;p&gt;A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1885 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1886 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1887 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
1888 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.&lt;/p&gt;
1889 </description>
1890         </item>
1891
1892         <item>
1893                 <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
1894                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
1895                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
1896                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1897                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spice-space.org/&quot;&gt;The SPICE protocol&lt;/a&gt; for
1898 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1899 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1900 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1901 missing in Debian.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/668284&quot;&gt;request
1902 for a package&lt;/a&gt; was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1903 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1904 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1905 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1906 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1907 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1908 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
1909
1910 &lt;p&gt;The source is now available from
1911 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&quot;&gt;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1912 </description>
1913         </item>
1914
1915         <item>
1916                 <title>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
1917                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
1918                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
1919                 <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1920                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The
1921 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
1922 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1923 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1924 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1925 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1926 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;, as part
1927 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1928 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the FreedomBox
1929 project&lt;/a&gt;.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1930 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1931 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1932 Raspberry Pi.&lt;/p&gt;
1933
1934 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the knowledge on how to build &quot;foreign&quot; (aka non-native
1935 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1936 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1937 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1938 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1939 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html&quot;&gt;Debian
1940 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;.  First, the
1941 &lt;tt&gt;--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler&lt;/tt&gt; option tell vmdebootstrap to
1942 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1943 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1944 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1945 two new options &lt;tt&gt;--bootsize size&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;--boottype
1946 fstype&lt;/tt&gt; to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1947 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1948 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a &lt;tt&gt;--variant
1949 variant&lt;/tt&gt; option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1950 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1951 &lt;tt&gt;--no-extlinux&lt;/tt&gt; to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1952 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1953 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1954 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1955 available from
1956 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/&quot;&gt;the
1957 upstream project page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1958
1959 &lt;p&gt;To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1960 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1961 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1962 list:&lt;/p&gt;
1963
1964 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1965 #!/bin/sh
1966 set -e # Exit on first error
1967 rootdir=&quot;$1&quot;
1968 cd &quot;$rootdir&quot;
1969 cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF &gt; etc/apt/sources.list
1970 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1971 EOF
1972 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1973 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1974 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1975     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1976 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1977 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1978 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1979 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1980 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1981
1982 &lt;p&gt;Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1983 to build the image:&lt;/p&gt;
1984
1985 &lt;pre&gt;
1986 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1987     --variant minbase \
1988     --arch armel \
1989     --distribution jessie \
1990     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1991     --image test.img \
1992     --size 600M \
1993     --bootsize 64M \
1994     --boottype vfat \
1995     --log-level debug \
1996     --verbose \
1997     --no-kernel \
1998     --no-extlinux \
1999     --root-password raspberry \
2000     --hostname raspberrypi \
2001     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2002     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2003     --package netbase \
2004     --package git-core \
2005     --package binutils \
2006     --package ca-certificates \
2007     --package wget \
2008     --package kmod
2009 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2010
2011 &lt;p&gt;The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2012 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2013 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2014 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2015 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2016 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2017 using a non-free binary blob.&lt;/p&gt;
2018
2019 &lt;p&gt;The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2020 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2021 build dependency list.&lt;/p&gt;
2022
2023 &lt;p&gt;The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2024 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2025 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2026 than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; based images.&lt;/p&gt;
2027 </description>
2028         </item>
2029
2030         <item>
2031                 <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
2032                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
2033                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
2034                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2035                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2036 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2037 these. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2038
2039 &lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
2040 Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
2041 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2042 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2043 to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
2044 earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2045 hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2046
2047 &lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2048 create &lt;a href=&quot;https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos&quot;&gt;video
2049 documentaries about the excessive spying&lt;/a&gt; on every Internet user that
2050 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I&#39;ve already
2051 donated.  Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;
2052
2053 &lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2054 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2055 statement under the heading
2056 &lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
2057 Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2058 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2059 too.&lt;/p&gt;
2060 </description>
2061         </item>
2062
2063         <item>
2064                 <title>Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</title>
2065                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</link>
2066                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</guid>
2067                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2068                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
2069 project&lt;/a&gt; have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2070 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2071 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;
2072
2073 &lt;ul&gt;
2074
2075 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA&quot;&gt;FreedomBox -
2076 2,5 minute marketing film&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2077
2078 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen
2079 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2080
2081 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen -
2082 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2083 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010&lt;/a&gt;
2084 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2085
2086 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE&quot;&gt;Fosdem 2011
2087 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2088
2089 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s&quot;&gt;Presentation of
2090 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2091
2092 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s&quot;&gt; Freedombox -
2093 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2094 York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2095
2096 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck&quot;&gt;Introduction
2097 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt;
2098 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2099
2100 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ&quot;&gt;Freedom, Out
2101 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube) &lt;/li&gt;
2102
2103 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
2104 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013&lt;/a&gt; (FOSDEM) &lt;/li&gt;
2105
2106 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg&quot;&gt;What is the
2107 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2108 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2109
2110 &lt;/ul&gt;
2111
2112 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is available from
2113 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations&quot;&gt;the
2114 Freedombox Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2115
2116 &lt;p&gt;On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2117 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2118 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2119 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2120 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2121 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2122 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2123 us on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC
2124 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
2125 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
2126 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
2127 </description>
2128         </item>
2129
2130         <item>
2131                 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
2132                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
2133                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
2134                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2135                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
2136 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
2137 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2138 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2139 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2140 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2141 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2142 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2143 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
2144
2145 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2146 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2147 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
2148 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2149 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
2150
2151 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
2152 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2153 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2154 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2155 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2156 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
2157 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2158 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2159 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2160 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
2161 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2162 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2163 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2164 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2165 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
2166
2167 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2168 scripts
2169 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
2170 and a administrative web interface
2171 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
2172 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2173 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
2174 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2175 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
2176 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2177 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;).  The
2178 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2179 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2180 this is really working yet, see
2181 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
2182 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2183 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2184 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2185 users.  I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2186 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2187 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
2188
2189 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2190 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2191 at.&lt;/p&gt;
2192
2193 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2194
2195 &lt;ol&gt;
2196
2197 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
2198 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
2199 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2200 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
2201 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2202
2203 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2204 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
2205
2206 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2207 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
2208
2209 &lt;/ol&gt;
2210
2211 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2212
2213 &lt;ol&gt;
2214
2215 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
2216 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
2217 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
2218 &lt;pre&gt;
2219 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
2220 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2221 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
2222 &lt;pre&gt;
2223 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2224    apt-key add -
2225 apt-get update
2226 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2227 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2228 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2229 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
2230
2231 &lt;/ol&gt;
2232
2233 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2234 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2235 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2236 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2237 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2238
2239 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2240 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2241 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2242 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
2243
2244 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2245 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2246 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
2247 irc.debian.org and the
2248 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
2249 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2250
2251 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2252 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
2253 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2254 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
2255 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
2256 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
2257 </description>
2258         </item>
2259
2260         <item>
2261                 <title>Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</title>
2262                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</link>
2263                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</guid>
2264                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2265                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Earlier, I reported about
2266 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html&quot;&gt;my
2267 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk&lt;/a&gt;.  Friday I was
2268 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2269 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2270 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2271 currently on the disk.&lt;/p&gt;
2272
2273 &lt;p&gt;I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2274 &lt;a href=&quot;https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&amp;ProdId=3472&amp;DwnldID=18363&amp;ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&amp;ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&amp;ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&amp;lang=eng&quot;&gt;issdfut_2.0.4.iso&lt;/a&gt;
2275 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2276 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2277 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2278 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2279 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2280 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2281 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2282 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2283 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2284 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2285 the broken disks.&lt;/p&gt;
2286 </description>
2287         </item>
2288
2289         <item>
2290                 <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
2291                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
2292                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
2293                 <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2294                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
2295 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
2296 new laptop&lt;/a&gt;.  I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
2297 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2298 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
2299 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
2300 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2301 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2302 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2303 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2304 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2305 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2306 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2307 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2308 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2309 station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
2310
2311 &lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2312 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2313 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2314 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2315 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2316 package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning.  The
2317 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
2318 for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
2319 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2320 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2321 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2322 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;
2323
2324 &lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2325 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2326 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2327 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2328 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2329 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2330 parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;
2331
2332 &lt;ul&gt;
2333
2334 &lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2335     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;
2336
2337 &lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2338     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2339     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;
2340
2341 &lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2342     systems.&lt;/li&gt;
2343
2344 &lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
2345     /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;
2346
2347 &lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;
2348
2349 &lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2350     cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;
2351
2352 &lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2353     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;
2354
2355 &lt;/ul&gt;
2356
2357 &lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2358 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2359 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2360 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2361 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2362 from getting the data on the disk (see
2363 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
2364 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2365 right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;
2366
2367 &lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2368 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2369 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;
2370
2371 &lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
2372 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2373 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2374 instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;
2375
2376 &lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2377 this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2378
2379 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2380 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2381 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;
2382
2383 &lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2384 there.&lt;/p&gt;
2385
2386 &lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2387 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2388 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2389 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2390 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2391 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2392 back.&lt;/p&gt;
2393 </description>
2394         </item>
2395
2396         <item>
2397                 <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
2398                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
2399                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
2400                 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2401                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
2402 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
2403 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
2404 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2405 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2406 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
2407 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2408 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;
2409
2410 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2411 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2412 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2413 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2414 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2415 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2416 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2417 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2418 lock up when I download a new
2419 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
2420 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2421 the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;
2422
2423 &lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2424 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2425 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2426 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2427 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2428 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
2429
2430 &lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2431 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2432 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2433 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2434 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2435 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
2436
2437 &lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2438 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2439 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2440 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2441 exist).&lt;/p&gt;
2442 </description>
2443         </item>
2444
2445         <item>
2446                 <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
2447                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
2448                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
2449                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2450                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2451 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2452 party in Oslo.  It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
2453 member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
2454 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2455 project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
2456 Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2457
2458 &lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2459 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2460 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2461 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
2462 wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
2463 </description>
2464         </item>
2465
2466         <item>
2467                 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
2468                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
2469                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
2470                 <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2471                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
2473 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2474 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2475 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2476 ended up picking a
2477 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
2478 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2479 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2480 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2481 on that below.&lt;/p&gt;
2482
2483 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2484 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2485 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2486 feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
2487 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2488 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2489 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2490 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2491 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;
2492
2493 &lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2494 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2495 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2496 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2497 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2498 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2499 needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2500
2501 &lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2502 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;
2503
2504 &lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2505 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2506 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2507 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2508 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2509 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2510 reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
2511 report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2512 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2513 kernel developers as
2514 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
2515 report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2516 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2517 Lenovo forums, both for
2518 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
2519 2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
2520 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
2521 03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
2522 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2523 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2524 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2525 There is even a
2526 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
2527 available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2528 minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;
2529
2530 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2531 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
2532 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2533 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2534 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
2535 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2536 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2537 </description>
2538         </item>
2539
2540         <item>
2541                 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
2542                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
2543                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
2544                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2545                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2546 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2547 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
2548 picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
2549 X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
2550 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
2551 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2552 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2553 with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;
2554
2555 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2556 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2557 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2558 feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
2559 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2560 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2561 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;
2562
2563 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2564 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2565 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
2566 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2567 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2568 new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2569
2570 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
2571 </description>
2572         </item>
2573
2574         <item>
2575                 <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
2576                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
2577                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
2578                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2579                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2580 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2581 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2582 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
2583 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2584 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
2585 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
2586 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2587 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2588 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2589 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
2590
2591 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2592 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2593 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2594 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2595 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2596 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2597 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2598 firmware-ipw2x00
2599 firmware-ipw2x00
2600 Preconfiguring packages ...
2601 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
2602 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
2603 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
2604 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
2605 #
2606 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2607
2608 &lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
2609 printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
2610
2611 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2612 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2613 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2614 #
2615 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2616
2617 &lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
2618 me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2619
2620 &lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
2621 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
2622 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
2623 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
2624 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
2625 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
2626 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
2627 &lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
2628 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
2629
2630 &lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
2631 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
2632 finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
2633 #655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
2634 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
2635 from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
2636 </description>
2637         </item>
2638
2639         <item>
2640                 <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
2641                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
2642                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
2643                 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2644                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2645 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2646 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
2647 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I&#39;ve seen it
2648 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2649 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
2650 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2651 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
2652 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2653 i915 driver used by the
2654 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
2655 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;
2656
2657 &lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
2658 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2659 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
2660 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2661 can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;
2662
2663 &lt;pre&gt;
2664 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2665 update-initramfs -u -k all
2666 &lt;/pre&gt;
2667
2668 &lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
2669 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
2670 mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
2671 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2672 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
2673 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
2674 intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
2675 &lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
2676 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
2677 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2678 number.&lt;/p&gt;
2679
2680 &lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
2681 -vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;
2682
2683 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2684 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2685     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2686     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2687  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2688  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2689     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2690  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
2691     &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
2692  Latency: 0
2693  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2694  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2695  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2696  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2697  Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
2698  Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
2699  Kernel driver in use: i915
2700 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2701
2702 &lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2703
2704 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2705 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2706        ...
2707         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2708         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2709        ...
2710 }
2711 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2712
2713 &lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2714 &lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
2715 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2716 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
2717 (at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
2718 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2719 yet shown up in
2720 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
2721 web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
2722 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2723 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2724 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
2725 sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;
2726
2727 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2728 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
2729 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
2730 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2731 the screen during login.  I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
2732 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
2733 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2734 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2735 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2736 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2737 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2738 you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
2739
2740 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2741 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2742 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2743 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2744 backlight.&lt;/p&gt;
2745 </description>
2746         </item>
2747
2748         <item>
2749                 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
2750                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
2751                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
2752                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2753                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
2754 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
2755 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2756 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;.  I found a solution, but am horrified
2757 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2758 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
2759
2760 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2761 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2762 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2763 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2764 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
2765
2766 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2767 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
2768 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2769 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
2770 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2771 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
2772 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2773 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2774 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
2775
2776 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2777 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2778 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2779 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
2780 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2781 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
2782 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
2783 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
2784
2785 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
2786 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
2787 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
2788 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2789 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
2790
2791 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2792 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
2793 </description>
2794         </item>
2795
2796         <item>
2797                 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
2798                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
2799                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
2800                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2801                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
2802 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
2803 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
2804 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
2805 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2806 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
2807
2808 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2809 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
2810 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
2811 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2812 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2813 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
2814 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2815 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2816 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2817 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
2818
2819 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2820 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
2821 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
2822 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2823 page.  If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2824 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
2825
2826 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2827 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
2828 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
2829 </description>
2830         </item>
2831
2832         <item>
2833                 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
2834                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
2835                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
2836                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2837                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
2838 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
2839 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2840 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
2841 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2842 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
2843 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2844 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2845 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
2846 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
2847
2848 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2849 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2850 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn&#39;t very
2851 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2852 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
2853
2854 &lt;p&gt;The script,
2855 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
2856 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2857 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2858 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
2859
2860 &lt;ol&gt;
2861
2862 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
2863 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
2864 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2865     our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
2866 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2867     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2868     according to the profile specified in the config above,
2869     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
2870 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2871     that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
2872 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
2873
2874 &lt;/ol&gt;
2875
2876 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2877 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2878 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2879 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
2880
2881 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2882 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
2883 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2884 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
2885 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2886 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
2887
2888 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2889 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2890 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
2891
2892 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2893 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
2894 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
2895 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2896
2897 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2898 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2899 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2900 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
2901 </description>
2902         </item>
2903
2904         <item>
2905                 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
2906                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
2907                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
2908                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2909                 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
2910 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
2911 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
2912 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
2913 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
2914 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
2915 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
2916 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
2917 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
2918 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
2919 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
2920 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
2921 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
2922
2923 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
2924 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2925 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2926 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2927 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2928 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2929 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2930 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2931 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2932 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2933 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2934 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2935
2936 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
2937 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
2938 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
2939
2940 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
2941 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
2942 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
2943 </description>
2944         </item>
2945
2946         <item>
2947                 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
2948                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
2949                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
2950                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2951                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
2952 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
2953 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
2954 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
2955 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
2956
2957 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
2958 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
2959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
2960 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
2961 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
2962 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
2963 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
2964 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
2965 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
2966 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
2967 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
2968
2969 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
2970 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
2971 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
2972 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
2973 follow.&lt;p&gt;
2974 </description>
2975         </item>
2976
2977         <item>
2978                 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
2979                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
2980                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
2981                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2982                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
2983 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
2984 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
2985 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
2986
2987 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
2988 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
2989 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
2990 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
2991 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
2992 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2993 </description>
2994         </item>
2995
2996         <item>
2997                 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
2998                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
2999                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
3000                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3001                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
3002 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
3003 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
3004 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
3005 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3006 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
3007 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3008 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
3009
3010 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3011 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3012 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3013 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3014 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
3015 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3016 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
3017 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
3018
3019 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3020 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3021 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
3022 #696715&lt;/a&gt;).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3023 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3024
3025 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3026 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3027 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3028 </description>
3029         </item>
3030
3031         <item>
3032                 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
3033                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
3034                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
3035                 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3036                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
3037 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
3038 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3039 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3040 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
3041 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
3042 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3043 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3044 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3045 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
3046 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
3048 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
3049 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
3050
3051 &lt;pre&gt;
3052 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3053 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
3054 &lt;/pre&gt;
3055
3056 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
3057 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3058 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3059 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3060
3061 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3062 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
3063 stuff, in other words.  I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3064 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3065 word.&lt;/p&gt;
3066
3067 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
3068 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3069 process.&lt;/p&gt;
3070
3071 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3072 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
3073 </description>
3074         </item>
3075
3076         <item>
3077                 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
3078                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
3079                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
3080                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3081                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
3082 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
3083 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;.  Now my
3084 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
3085 it, fetch the
3086 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
3087 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
3088 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
3089 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
3090
3091 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
3092
3093 &lt;ul&gt;
3094
3095 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3096 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
3097
3098 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3099 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3100 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
3101
3102 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3103 the APT database, a database
3104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
3105 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
3106
3107 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3108 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3109 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3110 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3111
3112 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
3113 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
3114
3115 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3116 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
3117
3118 &lt;/ul&gt;
3119
3120 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
3121 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
3122 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3123 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
3124
3125 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
3126 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
3127 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
3128 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
3129 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3130
3131 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3132 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
3133 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3134 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3135 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3136 method.  I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3137 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3138 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
3139
3140 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
3141 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3142 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
3143 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3144 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.  If you lack debuild, install the
3145 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
3146
3147 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
3148 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3149 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
3150 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
3151 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
3152 </description>
3153         </item>
3154
3155         <item>
3156                 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
3157                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
3158                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
3159                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3160                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
3161 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3162 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
3163 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
3164 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
3165 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
3166 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3167 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3168 not a durable solution.
3169
3170 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
3171 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
3172
3173 &lt;ul&gt;
3174
3175 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3176   than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
3177 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
3178 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
3179 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
3180 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
3181 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
3182 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
3183 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
3184 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
3185 size).&lt;/li&gt;
3186 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3187   X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3188 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3189   the time).
3190
3191 &lt;/ul&gt;
3192
3193 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3194 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
3195 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
3196 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
3197 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
3198 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
3199 Lenovo took over.  But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
3200 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
3201
3202 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
3203 external keyboard?  I&#39;ll have to check the
3204 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
3205 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
3206 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
3207 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3208 </description>
3209         </item>
3210
3211         <item>
3212                 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
3213                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
3214                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
3215                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3216                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
3217 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
3218 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
3219 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
3220 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
3221 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
3222 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
3223
3224 &lt;pre&gt;
3225 #!/usr/bin/python
3226 import sys
3227 import apt
3228 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3229     cache = apt.Cache()
3230     cache.open(None)
3231     thepkgs = []
3232     for pkg in cache:
3233         version = pkg.candidate
3234         if version is None:
3235             version = pkg.installed
3236         if version is None:
3237             continue
3238         record = version.record
3239         if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
3240             continue
3241         mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
3242         for t in mime_types:
3243             t = t.rstrip().strip()
3244             if t == mimetype:
3245                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
3246     return thepkgs
3247 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
3248 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
3249     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
3250 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
3251 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3252     print &quot;  %s&quot; %pkg
3253 &lt;/pre&gt;
3254
3255 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
3256
3257 &lt;pre&gt;
3258 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
3259 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
3260   gecko-mediaplayer
3261 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
3262 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
3263   browser-plugin-gnash
3264 %
3265 &lt;/pre&gt;
3266
3267 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
3268 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
3269 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
3270 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
3271
3272 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
3273 request for icweasel support for this feature is
3274 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
3275 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today).  Lack
3276 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
3277 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
3278 </description>
3279         </item>
3280
3281         <item>
3282                 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
3283                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
3284                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
3285                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
3286                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
3287 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
3288 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
3289 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
3290 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
3291 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
3292 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
3293 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
3294
3295 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
3296 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
3297 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
3298 can be found on the
3299 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
3300 site&lt;/a&gt;.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
3301 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
3302 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
3303 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
3304
3305 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3306
3307 &lt;pre&gt;
3308   count MIME type
3309   ----- -----------------------
3310      32 text/plain
3311      30 audio/mpeg
3312      29 image/png
3313      28 image/jpeg
3314      27 application/ogg
3315      26 audio/x-mp3
3316      25 image/tiff
3317      25 image/gif
3318      22 image/bmp
3319      22 audio/x-wav
3320      20 audio/x-flac
3321      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3322      18 video/x-ms-asf
3323      18 audio/x-musepack
3324      18 audio/x-mpeg
3325      18 application/x-ogg
3326      17 video/mpeg
3327      17 audio/x-scpls
3328      17 audio/ogg
3329      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3330 &lt;/pre&gt;
3331
3332 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3333
3334 &lt;pre&gt;
3335   count MIME type
3336   ----- -----------------------
3337      33 text/plain
3338      32 image/png
3339      32 image/jpeg
3340      29 audio/mpeg
3341      27 image/gif
3342      26 image/tiff
3343      26 application/ogg
3344      25 audio/x-mp3
3345      22 image/bmp
3346      21 audio/x-wav
3347      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3348      19 audio/x-mpeg
3349      18 video/mpeg
3350      18 audio/x-scpls
3351      18 audio/x-flac
3352      18 application/x-ogg
3353      17 video/x-ms-asf
3354      17 text/html
3355      17 audio/x-musepack
3356      16 image/x-xbitmap
3357 &lt;/pre&gt;
3358
3359 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3360
3361 &lt;pre&gt;
3362   count MIME type
3363   ----- -----------------------
3364      31 text/plain
3365      31 image/png
3366      31 image/jpeg
3367      29 audio/mpeg
3368      28 application/ogg
3369      27 image/gif
3370      26 image/tiff
3371      26 audio/x-mp3
3372      23 audio/x-wav
3373      22 image/bmp
3374      21 audio/x-flac
3375      20 audio/x-mpegurl
3376      19 audio/x-mpeg
3377      18 video/x-ms-asf
3378      18 video/mpeg
3379      18 audio/x-scpls
3380      18 application/x-ogg
3381      17 audio/x-musepack
3382      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3383      16 video/x-msvideo
3384 &lt;/pre&gt;
3385
3386 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
3387 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
3388 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
3389 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
3390
3391 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
3392 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
3393 </description>
3394         </item>
3395
3396         <item>
3397                 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
3398                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
3399                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
3400                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3401                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
3402 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
3403 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
3404 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
3405 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
3406 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
3407 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
3408 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
3409 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
3410 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3411
3412 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
3413 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
3414 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
3415 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
3416
3417 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3418 Package: package-name
3419 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
3420 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3421
3422 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
3423 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
3424
3425 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
3426 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
3427
3428 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3429 Package: cheese
3430 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
3431 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3432
3433 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
3434 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
3435
3436 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3437 Package: pcmciautils
3438 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
3439 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3440
3441 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
3442 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
3443
3444 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3445 Package: colorhug-client
3446 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
3447 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3448
3449 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
3450 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
3451 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
3452
3453 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
3454 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
3455 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
3456 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
3457 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I&#39;ve
3458 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
3459 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
3460 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
3461
3462 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
3463 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
3464 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
3465 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
3466 try the
3467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
3468 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
3469 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
3470 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
3471
3472 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
3473 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
3474
3475 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3476 % ./hw-support-lookup
3477 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
3478 &lt;br&gt;%
3479 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3480
3481 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
3482 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
3483
3484 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3485 % ./hw-support-lookup
3486 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
3487 &lt;br&gt;%
3488 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3489
3490 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
3491 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
3492 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
3493
3494 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
3495 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
3496 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
3497 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
3498 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
3499 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
3500 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
3501 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
3502
3503 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3504 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3505 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3506 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3507 </description>
3508         </item>
3509
3510         <item>
3511                 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
3512                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
3513                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
3514                 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3515                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
3516 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
3517 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
3518 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
3519 in
3520 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
3521 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
3522
3523 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3524
3525 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
3526 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
3527 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
3528 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
3529 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
3530 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
3531
3532 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
3533 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
3534
3535 &lt;pre&gt;
3536 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
3537 &lt;/pre&gt;
3538
3539 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
3540 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
3541
3542 &lt;pre&gt;
3543 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
3544 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
3545 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
3546 %
3547 &lt;/pre&gt;
3548
3549 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3550
3551 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
3552 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
3553
3554 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3555 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
3556 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3557
3558 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
3559
3560 &lt;pre&gt;
3561  v   00008086  (vendor)
3562  d   00002770  (device)
3563  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
3564  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
3565  bc  06        (bus class)
3566  sc  00        (bus subclass)
3567  i   00        (interface)
3568 &lt;/pre&gt;
3569
3570 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
3571 -n&#39; as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
3572 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
3573 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
3574
3575 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
3576 means.&lt;/p&gt;
3577
3578 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3579
3580 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
3581 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
3582
3583 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3584 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
3585 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3586
3587 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
3588
3589 &lt;pre&gt;
3590  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
3591  p    0001  (device product)
3592  d    0206  (bcddevice)
3593  dc     09  (device class)
3594  dsc    00  (device subclass)
3595  dp     00  (device protocol)
3596  ic     09  (interface class)
3597  isc    00  (interface subclass)
3598  ip     00  (interface protocol)
3599 &lt;/pre&gt;
3600
3601 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
3602 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
3603 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
3604
3605 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3606 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
3607 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
3608 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
3609 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
3610 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3611
3612 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
3613 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
3614 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
3615
3616 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3617
3618 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
3619 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
3620
3621 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3622 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3623 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3624
3625 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
3626
3627 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3628
3629 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
3630 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
3631 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
3632
3633 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3634 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
3635 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3636
3637 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
3638
3639 &lt;pre&gt;
3640  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
3641  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
3642  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
3643  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
3644  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
3645  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
3646  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
3647  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
3648  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
3649  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
3650  ct   10             (chassis type)
3651  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
3652 &lt;/pre&gt;
3653
3654 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
3655 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
3656
3657 &lt;pre&gt;
3658   3 Desktop
3659   4 Low Profile Desktop
3660   5 Pizza Box
3661   6 Mini Tower
3662   7 Tower
3663   8 Portable
3664   9 Laptop
3665  10 Notebook
3666  11 Hand Held
3667  12 Docking Station
3668  13 All In One
3669  14 Sub Notebook
3670  15 Space-saving
3671  16 Lunch Box
3672  17 Main Server Chassis
3673  18 Expansion Chassis
3674  19 Sub Chassis
3675  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
3676  21 Peripheral Chassis
3677  22 RAID Chassis
3678  23 Rack Mount Chassis
3679  24 Sealed-case PC
3680  25 Multi-system
3681  26 CompactPCI
3682  27 AdvancedTCA
3683  28 Blade
3684  29 Blade Enclosing
3685 &lt;/pre&gt;
3686
3687 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
3688 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
3689 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
3690
3691 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3692
3693 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
3694 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
3695
3696 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3697 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
3698 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3699
3700 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
3701
3702 &lt;pre&gt;
3703   ty  01  (type)
3704   pr  00  (prototype)
3705   id  00  (id)
3706   ex  00  (extra)
3707 &lt;/pre&gt;
3708
3709 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
3710 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
3711
3712 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3713
3714 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
3715 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
3716 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
3717 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
3718 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
3719 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
3720 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
3721
3722 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3723
3724 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
3725 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
3726
3727 &lt;pre&gt;
3728   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
3729     echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
3730     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/  /&#39; ; \
3731   done
3732 &lt;/pre&gt;
3733
3734 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
3735 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
3736
3737 &lt;pre&gt;
3738   acpi:ACPI0003:
3739     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
3740   acpi:device:
3741   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
3742   acpi:IBM0068:
3743     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
3744     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
3745     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
3746     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
3747   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3748     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
3749     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
3750     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
3751   [...]
3752 &lt;/pre&gt;
3753
3754 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3755 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3756 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3757 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3758
3759 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
3760 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
3761 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
3762 </description>
3763         </item>
3764
3765         <item>
3766                 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
3767                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
3768                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
3769                 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3770                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
3771 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
3772 Launcher and updated the Debian package
3773 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
3774 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
3775 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
3776 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
3777 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
3778 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
3779 contribute.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
3780 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
3781 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
3782 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
3783 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
3784 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
3785 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
3786 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
3787 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
3788 </description>
3789         </item>
3790
3791         <item>
3792                 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
3793                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
3794                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
3795                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3796                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
3797 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
3798 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
3799 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
3800 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
3801 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
3802 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
3803 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
3804 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
3805 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
3806 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
3807
3808 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
3809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
3810 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is fairly
3811 simple:
3812
3813 &lt;ul&gt;
3814
3815 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
3816   starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
3817
3818 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
3819   hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
3820
3821 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
3822   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
3823   packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3824
3825 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
3826   package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
3827
3828 &lt;/ul&gt;
3829
3830 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
3831 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
3832 discover database to find packages and
3833 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
3834 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3835
3836 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
3837 draft package is now checked into
3838 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
3839 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process, I updated the
3840 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
3841 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
3842 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
3843 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
3844 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
3845 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
3846 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
3847 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
3848 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
3849 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
3850
3851 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
3852 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
3853 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
3854
3855 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3856
3857 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
3858 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
3859 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
3860
3861 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
3862 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
3863 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
3864 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
3865 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
3866 reportbug if it isn&#39;t.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
3867 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
3868
3869 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
3870 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
3871 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
3872 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
3873 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
3874 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
3875 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
3876 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
3877 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
3878
3879 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
3880 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3881 </description>
3882         </item>
3883
3884         <item>
3885                 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
3886                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
3887                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
3888                 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3889                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
3890 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
3891 NXT&lt;/a&gt;.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
3892 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
3893 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
3894 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
3895 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
3896 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
3897 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
3898 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3899
3900 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
3901 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
3902 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
3903 </description>
3904         </item>
3905
3906         <item>
3907                 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
3908                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
3909                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
3910                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
3911                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
3912 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
3913
3914 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
3915 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
3916 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
3917 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
3918 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
3919 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
3920 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
3921 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
3922 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
3923 name.&lt;/p&gt;
3924
3925 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
3926 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
3927 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
3928
3929 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3930 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
3931 cd bitcoin
3932 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
3933 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
3934 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3935
3936 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
3937 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
3938 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
3939 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
3940 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
3941 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
3942 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
3943 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
3944 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
3945
3946 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3947 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3948 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3949 </description>
3950         </item>
3951
3952         <item>
3953                 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
3954                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
3955                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
3956                 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
3957                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
3958 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
3959 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
3960 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
3961 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
3962 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
3963 is now maintained by a
3964 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
3965 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
3966 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
3967 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
3968 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
3969 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
3970 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
3971 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
3972 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
3973 Corallo in a
3974 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
3975 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
3976 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
3977
3978 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
3979 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
3980 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
3981 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
3982 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
3983 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
3984 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
3985 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
3986 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
3987 new version to unstable.
3988
3989 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
3990 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
3991 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
3992 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
3993 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
3994 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
3995 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
3996 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
3997 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
3998 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
3999 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
4000 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4001 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4002 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
4003 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
4004
4005 &lt;p&gt;My
4006 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
4007 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4008 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4009 years ago, as can be
4010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
4011 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
4012 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4013 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4014 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
4015 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4016 the same address as last time,
4017 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4018 </description>
4019         </item>
4020
4021         <item>
4022                 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
4023                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
4024                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
4025                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4026                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
4027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
4028 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4029 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4030 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
4031 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4032
4033 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4034 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4035 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4036 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
4037
4038 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4039 PostScript formats at
4040 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
4041 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4042 </description>
4043         </item>
4044
4045         <item>
4046                 <title>Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</title>
4047                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</link>
4048                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</guid>
4049                 <pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4050                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I dag fyller
4051 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813&quot;&gt;Debian-prosjektet 19
4052 år&lt;/a&gt;.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4053 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!&lt;/p&gt;
4054 </description>
4055         </item>
4056
4057         <item>
4058                 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
4059                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
4060                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
4061                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4062                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4063 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
4064 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
4065 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4066 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4067 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
4068 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4069 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4070 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
4071 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
4072 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
4073
4074 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4075 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4076 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4077 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
4078 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
4079 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
4080 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
4081 </description>
4082         </item>
4083
4084         <item>
4085                 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
4086                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
4087                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
4088                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
4089                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
4090 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
4091 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4092 up to date.  If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
4093 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4094 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4095 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4096 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4097 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4098 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
4099
4100 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4101 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
4102 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4103 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
4104
4105 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4106 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
4107 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4108 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4109 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4110 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4111 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4112 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
4113
4114 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4115 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4116 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
4117
4118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4119 #!/usr/bin/perl
4120 use strict;
4121 use warnings;
4122 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4123 BEGIN {
4124     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4125     my %rhelmodules = (
4126         &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
4127         );
4128     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4129         eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
4130         if ($@) {
4131             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4132             system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
4133             eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
4134         }
4135     }
4136 }
4137 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
4138
4139 upgrade_dell();
4140
4141 exit 0;
4142
4143 sub run_firmware_script {
4144     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4145     unless ($script) {
4146         print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
4147         exit 1
4148     }
4149     print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
4150
4151     if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4152         print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
4153     } else {
4154         print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
4155     }
4156 }
4157
4158 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4159     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4160     # Run firmware packages
4161     for my $dir (@dirs) {
4162         print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
4163         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
4164         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4165             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4166             run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
4167         }
4168         closedir $dh;
4169     }
4170 }
4171
4172 sub download {
4173     my $url = shift;
4174     print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
4175     system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
4176 }
4177
4178 sub upgrade_dell {
4179     my @dirs;
4180     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4181     chomp $product;
4182
4183     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4184
4185         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4186         system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
4187
4188         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4189             CLEANUP =&gt; 1
4190             );
4191         chdir($tmpdir);
4192         fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
4193         system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
4194         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
4195         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4196         my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
4197         if (@paths) {
4198             for my $url (@paths) {
4199                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4200             }
4201             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4202         } else {
4203             print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
4204             print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
4205         }
4206         chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
4207     } else {
4208         print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
4209         print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
4210     }
4211 }
4212
4213 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4214     my $path = shift;
4215     my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
4216     download($url);
4217 }
4218
4219 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4220 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4221 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4222 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4223     my $filename = shift;
4224
4225     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4226     chomp $product;
4227     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4228
4229     print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
4230
4231     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4232     my @paths;
4233     for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4234         my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
4235         my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
4236         my $oscode;
4237         if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
4238             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
4239         } else {
4240             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
4241         }
4242         if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
4243         {
4244             @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
4245         }
4246     }
4247     for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4248         my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
4249
4250         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4251         next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
4252
4253         my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
4254         for my $path (@paths) {
4255             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4256                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4257             }
4258         }
4259     }
4260     return @paths;
4261 }
4262 &lt;/pre&gt;
4263
4264 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4265 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4266 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4267 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4268 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
4269 </description>
4270         </item>
4271
4272         <item>
4273                 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
4274                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
4275                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
4276                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4277                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
4278 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
4279 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
4280 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
4281 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
4282 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
4283 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  I only have time to address one
4284 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4285 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
4286
4287 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4288 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4289 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
4290 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4291 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4292
4293 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4294 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4295 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4296 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4297 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
4298 mode.  I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4299 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
4300
4301 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4302 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  This means the only thing that is
4303 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
4304 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4305 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4306 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4307 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4308 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4309 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4310 1.  It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
4311 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4312 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
4313
4314 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
4315 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4316 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  When booting into
4317 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
4318 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  A problem show up when
4319 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
4320 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4321 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4322 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
4323
4324 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4325 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
4326 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4327 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4328 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4329 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4330 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
4331 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
4332
4333 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4334 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
4335 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
4336 </description>
4337         </item>
4338
4339         <item>
4340                 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
4341                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
4342                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
4343                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4344                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4345 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
4346 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
4347 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
4348 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4349 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4350 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4351 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4352 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4353 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
4354 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4355 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4356 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
4357
4358 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
4359 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4360 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
4361 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
4362 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4363 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4364 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4365 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
4366 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
4367
4368 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4369 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4370 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4371 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
4372
4373 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
4374 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4375 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4376 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4377 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4378 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4379 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4380 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4381 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4382 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4383 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4384 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4385 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4386 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
4387 </description>
4388         </item>
4389
4390         <item>
4391                 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
4392                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
4393                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
4394                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4395                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4396 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4397 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
4398 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4399 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
4400
4401 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4402 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4403 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
4404
4405 &lt;ol&gt;
4406
4407 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
4408 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4409 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4410 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4411 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
4412 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
4413 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4414 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
4415
4416 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4417 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4418 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4419 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4420 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4421 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4422 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
4423 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4424 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4425 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
4426 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4427 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4428 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
4429
4430 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4431 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
4432 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4433 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
4434 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
4435 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4436 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
4437 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
4438 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4439 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
4440
4441 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
4442 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4443 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4444 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
4445 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
4446 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
4447
4448 &lt;/ol&gt;
4449
4450 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4451 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4452 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
4453
4454 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4455 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
4456 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
4457 </description>
4458         </item>
4459
4460         <item>
4461                 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
4462                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
4463                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
4464                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
4465                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
4466 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4467 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4468 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4469 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
4470
4471 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4472 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
4473 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4474 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
4475 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
4476 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
4477 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4478 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4479 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4480 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4481 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4482 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
4483
4484 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4485 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
4486 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
4487 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4488 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
4489 </description>
4490         </item>
4491
4492         <item>
4493                 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
4494                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
4495                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
4496                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4497                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
4498 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4499 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
4500
4501 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4502 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4503 of the British service
4504 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
4505 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
4506 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4507 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
4508 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
4509 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
4510 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4511 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4512 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
4513 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
4514 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
4515 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4516 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
4517
4518 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4519 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
4520 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4521 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
4522 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4523 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
4524
4525 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4526 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
4527 </description>
4528         </item>
4529
4530         <item>
4531                 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
4532                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
4533                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
4534                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4535                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4536 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
4537 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4538 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4539 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
4540 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
4541 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4542 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4543 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4544 out which security holes were present in our free software
4545 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
4546
4547 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4548 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4549 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
4550 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4551 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4552 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
4553 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4554 solution.  Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
4555 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4556 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
4557 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
4558 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
4559 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
4560 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4561 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
4562 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
4563
4564 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4565 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4566 check out, one could look up
4567 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
4568 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4569 The most recent one is
4570 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
4571 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4572 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
4573
4574 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4575 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
4576 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4577 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
4578 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4579 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
4580
4581 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4582 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
4583 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
4584 RHEL is providing
4585 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
4586 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
4587 information.  I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
4588
4589 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4590 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4591 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
4592 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4593 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4594 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
4595 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4596 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
4597 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4598 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
4599
4600 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4601 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4602 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4603 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4604 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
4605 </description>
4606         </item>
4607
4608         <item>
4609                 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
4610                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
4611                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
4612                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4613                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
4614 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
4615 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4616 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4617 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
4618 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4619 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4620 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
4621 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4622 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;.  The relevant output on
4623 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4624
4625 &lt;pre&gt;
4626 loaded modules:
4627 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4628 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
4629 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
4630 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4631 10de:03ec pata_amd
4632 10de:03f6 sata_nv
4633 1022:1103 k8temp
4634 109e:036e bttv
4635 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
4636 11ab:4364 sky2
4637 &lt;/pre&gt;
4638
4639 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4640 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
4641
4642 &lt;pre&gt;
4643 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4644     echo loaded pci modules:
4645     (
4646         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4647         for address in * ; do
4648             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
4649                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4650                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
4651                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4652                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
4653                     echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
4654                 fi
4655             fi
4656         done
4657     )
4658     echo
4659 fi
4660 &lt;/pre&gt;
4661
4662 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4663 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
4664
4665 &lt;pre&gt;
4666 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4667     echo loaded usb modules:
4668     (
4669         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4670         for address in * ; do
4671             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
4672                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4673                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
4674                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4675                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
4676                     if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
4677                         echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
4678                     fi
4679                 fi
4680             fi
4681         done
4682     )
4683     echo
4684 fi
4685 &lt;/pre&gt;
4686
4687 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4688 well.&lt;/p&gt;
4689 </description>
4690         </item>
4691
4692         <item>
4693                 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
4694                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
4695                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
4696                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
4697                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
4698 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
4699 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
4700 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
4701 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
4702 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
4703 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
4704 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
4705 university.&lt;/p&gt;
4706
4707 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
4708 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
4709 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
4710 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
4711 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
4712 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
4713 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
4714 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
4715
4716 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
4717 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
4718
4719 &lt;ul&gt;
4720
4721 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working?  I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
4722 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
4723 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
4724
4725 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
4726 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
4727
4728 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
4729 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
4730 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
4731
4732 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
4733 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
4734 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
4735 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
4736 normally test this by playing
4737 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
4738 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
4739
4740 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
4741 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
4742
4743 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
4744 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
4745
4746 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
4747 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
4748
4749 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
4750 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
4751 few.&lt;/li&gt;
4752
4753 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
4754 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
4755 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
4756
4757 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I&#39;m testing if the
4758 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
4759 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
4760
4761 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
4762 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
4763 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
4764 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
4765 not.&lt;/li&gt;
4766
4767 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
4768 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
4769 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
4770 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
4771
4772 &lt;/ul&gt;
4773
4774 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
4775 for the HP machines I am testing.  I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
4776 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
4777 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
4778 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
4779 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
4780 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
4781 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
4782 </description>
4783         </item>
4784
4785         <item>
4786                 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
4787                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
4788                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
4789                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
4790                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
4791 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
4792 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
4793 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
4794
4795 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
4796 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
4797 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
4798 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
4799 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
4800 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
4801 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
4802 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
4803 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
4804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
4805 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
4806 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
4807 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
4808 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
4809 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
4810 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
4811 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
4812 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
4813 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
4814 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
4815
4816 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
4817 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
4818 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
4819 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
4820 If the Skolelinux foundation
4821 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
4822 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
4823 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
4824 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
4825 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
4826 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
4827 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
4828 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
4829
4830 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
4831 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
4832 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
4833 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
4834 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
4835 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
4836 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
4837 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
4838 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
4839 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
4840 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
4841 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
4842 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
4843 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
4844 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
4845
4846 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
4847 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
4848 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
4849 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
4850 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
4851 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
4852 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
4853 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
4854 BitCoins.  Check out
4855 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
4856 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
4857 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
4858 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
4859 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
4860
4861 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
4862 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
4863 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
4864 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
4865 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
4866 </description>
4867         </item>
4868
4869         <item>
4870                 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
4871                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
4872                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
4873                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4874                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
4875 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
4876 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
4877 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
4878 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
4879 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
4880 A blog post from
4881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
4882 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
4883 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
4884 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
4885 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
4886 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
4887 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
4888
4889 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
4890 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
4891 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
4892 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
4893 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
4894 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
4895 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
4896 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
4897 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
4898 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
4899
4900 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
4901 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
4902 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
4903 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
4904 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
4905 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
4906 you can even get
4907 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
4908 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
4909 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
4910 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
4911
4912 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
4913 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
4914 donations to the address
4915 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
4916 </description>
4917         </item>
4918
4919         <item>
4920                 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
4921                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
4922                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
4923                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4924                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
4925 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
4926 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
4927 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
4928 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
4929 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
4930 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
4931 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
4932
4933 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
4934 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
4935 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
4936 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
4937 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
4938 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
4939 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
4940 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
4941 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
4942 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
4943 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
4944
4945 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
4946 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
4947 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
4948 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
4949 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
4950 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
4951 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
4952 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
4953 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
4954 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
4955 </description>
4956         </item>
4957
4958         <item>
4959                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
4960                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
4961                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
4962                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
4963                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
4964 upgrade testing of the
4965 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
4966 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
4967 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
4968 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
4969
4970 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
4971
4972 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
4973
4974 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4975   apache2.2-bin
4976   aptdaemon
4977   baobab
4978   binfmt-support
4979   browser-plugin-gnash
4980   cheese-common
4981   cli-common
4982   cups-pk-helper
4983   dmz-cursor-theme
4984   empathy
4985   empathy-common
4986   freedesktop-sound-theme
4987   freeglut3
4988   gconf-defaults-service
4989   gdm-themes
4990   gedit-plugins
4991   geoclue
4992   geoclue-hostip
4993   geoclue-localnet
4994   geoclue-manual
4995   geoclue-yahoo
4996   gnash
4997   gnash-common
4998   gnome
4999   gnome-backgrounds
5000   gnome-cards-data
5001   gnome-codec-install
5002   gnome-core
5003   gnome-desktop-environment
5004   gnome-disk-utility
5005   gnome-screenshot
5006   gnome-search-tool
5007   gnome-session-canberra
5008   gnome-system-log
5009   gnome-themes-extras
5010   gnome-themes-more
5011   gnome-user-share
5012   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5013   gstreamer0.10-tools
5014   gtk2-engines
5015   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5016   gtk2-engines-smooth
5017   hamster-applet
5018   libapache2-mod-dnssd
5019   libapr1
5020   libaprutil1
5021   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5022   libaprutil1-ldap
5023   libart2.0-cil
5024   libboost-date-time1.42.0
5025   libboost-python1.42.0
5026   libboost-thread1.42.0
5027   libchamplain-0.4-0
5028   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
5029   libcheese-gtk18
5030   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5031   libcryptui0
5032   libdiscid0
5033   libelf1
5034   libepc-1.0-2
5035   libepc-common
5036   libepc-ui-1.0-2
5037   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5038   libfreerdp0
5039   libgconf2.0-cil
5040   libgdata-common
5041   libgdata7
5042   libgdu-gtk0
5043   libgee2
5044   libgeoclue0
5045   libgexiv2-0
5046   libgif4
5047   libglade2.0-cil
5048   libglib2.0-cil
5049   libgmime2.4-cil
5050   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5051   libgnome2.24-cil
5052   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5053   libgpod-common
5054   libgpod4
5055   libgtk2.0-cil
5056   libgtkglext1
5057   libgtksourceview2.0-common
5058   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5059   libmono-addins0.2-cil
5060   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5061   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5062   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5063   libmono-posix2.0-cil
5064   libmono-security2.0-cil
5065   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5066   libmono-system2.0-cil
5067   libmtp8
5068   libmusicbrainz3-6
5069   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5070   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5071   libopal3.6.8
5072   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
5073   libpt2.6.7
5074   libpython2.6
5075   librpm1
5076   librpmio1
5077   libsdl1.2debian
5078   libsrtp0
5079   libssh-4
5080   libtelepathy-farsight0
5081   libtelepathy-glib0
5082   libtidy-0.99-0
5083   media-player-info
5084   mesa-utils
5085   mono-2.0-gac
5086   mono-gac
5087   mono-runtime
5088   nautilus-sendto
5089   nautilus-sendto-empathy
5090   p7zip-full
5091   pkg-config
5092   python-aptdaemon
5093   python-aptdaemon-gtk
5094   python-axiom
5095   python-beautifulsoup
5096   python-bugbuddy
5097   python-clientform
5098   python-coherence
5099   python-configobj
5100   python-crypto
5101   python-cupshelpers
5102   python-elementtree
5103   python-epsilon
5104   python-evolution
5105   python-feedparser
5106   python-gdata
5107   python-gdbm
5108   python-gst0.10
5109   python-gtkglext1
5110   python-gtksourceview2
5111   python-httplib2
5112   python-louie
5113   python-mako
5114   python-markupsafe
5115   python-mechanize
5116   python-nevow
5117   python-notify
5118   python-opengl
5119   python-openssl
5120   python-pam
5121   python-pkg-resources
5122   python-pyasn1
5123   python-pysqlite2
5124   python-rdflib
5125   python-serial
5126   python-tagpy
5127   python-twisted-bin
5128   python-twisted-conch
5129   python-twisted-core
5130   python-twisted-web
5131   python-utidylib
5132   python-webkit
5133   python-xdg
5134   python-zope.interface
5135   remmina
5136   remmina-plugin-data
5137   remmina-plugin-rdp
5138   remmina-plugin-vnc
5139   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5140   rhythmbox-plugins
5141   rpm-common
5142   rpm2cpio
5143   seahorse-plugins
5144   shotwell
5145   software-center
5146   system-config-printer-udev
5147   telepathy-gabble
5148   telepathy-mission-control-5
5149   telepathy-salut
5150   tomboy
5151   totem
5152   totem-coherence
5153   totem-mozilla
5154   totem-plugins
5155   transmission-common
5156   xdg-user-dirs
5157   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
5158   xserver-xephyr
5159 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5160
5161 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5162
5163 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5164   cheese
5165   ekiga
5166   eog
5167   epiphany-extensions
5168   evolution-exchange
5169   fast-user-switch-applet
5170   file-roller
5171   gcalctool
5172   gconf-editor
5173   gdm
5174   gedit
5175   gedit-common
5176   gnome-games
5177   gnome-games-data
5178   gnome-nettool
5179   gnome-system-tools
5180   gnome-themes
5181   gnuchess
5182   gucharmap
5183   guile-1.8-libs
5184   libavahi-ui0
5185   libdmx1
5186   libgalago3
5187   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
5188   libgtksourceview2.0-0
5189   liblircclient0
5190   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
5191   libspeexdsp1
5192   libsvga1
5193   rhythmbox
5194   seahorse
5195   sound-juicer
5196   system-config-printer
5197   totem-common
5198   transmission-gtk
5199   vinagre
5200   vino
5201 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5202
5203 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5204
5205 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5206   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5207 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5208
5209 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5210
5211 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5212 [nothing]
5213 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5214
5215 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
5216
5217 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5218
5219 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5220   ksmserver
5221 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5222
5223 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5224
5225 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5226   kwin
5227   network-manager-kde
5228 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5229
5230 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5231
5232 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5233   arts
5234   dolphin
5235   freespacenotifier
5236   google-gadgets-gst
5237   google-gadgets-xul
5238   kappfinder
5239   kcalc
5240   kcharselect
5241   kde-core
5242   kde-plasma-desktop
5243   kde-standard
5244   kde-window-manager
5245   kdeartwork
5246   kdeartwork-emoticons
5247   kdeartwork-style
5248   kdeartwork-theme-icon
5249   kdebase
5250   kdebase-apps
5251   kdebase-workspace
5252   kdebase-workspace-bin
5253   kdebase-workspace-data
5254   kdeeject
5255   kdelibs
5256   kdeplasma-addons
5257   kdeutils
5258   kdewallpapers
5259   kdf
5260   kfloppy
5261   kgpg
5262   khelpcenter4
5263   kinfocenter
5264   konq-plugins-l10n
5265   konqueror-nsplugins
5266   kscreensaver
5267   kscreensaver-xsavers
5268   ktimer
5269   kwrite
5270   libgle3
5271   libkde4-ruby1.8
5272   libkonq5
5273   libkonq5-templates
5274   libnetpbm10
5275   libplasma-ruby
5276   libplasma-ruby1.8
5277   libqt4-ruby1.8
5278   marble-data
5279   marble-plugins
5280   netpbm
5281   nuvola-icon-theme
5282   plasma-dataengines-workspace
5283   plasma-desktop
5284   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
5285   plasma-runners-addons
5286   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
5287   plasma-scriptengine-python
5288   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
5289   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
5290   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
5291   plasma-scriptengines
5292   plasma-wallpapers-addons
5293   plasma-widget-folderview
5294   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5295   ruby
5296   sweeper
5297   update-notifier-kde
5298   xscreensaver-data-extra
5299   xscreensaver-gl
5300   xscreensaver-gl-extra
5301   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5302 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5303
5304 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5305
5306 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5307   ark
5308   google-gadgets-common
5309   google-gadgets-qt
5310   htdig
5311   kate
5312   kdebase-bin
5313   kdebase-data
5314   kdepasswd
5315   kfind
5316   klipper
5317   konq-plugins
5318   konqueror
5319   ksysguard
5320   ksysguardd
5321   libarchive1
5322   libcln6
5323   libeet1
5324   libeina-svn-06
5325   libggadget-1.0-0b
5326   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
5327   libgps19
5328   libkdecorations4
5329   libkephal4
5330   libkonq4
5331   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
5332   libkscreensaver5
5333   libksgrd4
5334   libksignalplotter4
5335   libkunitconversion4
5336   libkwineffects1a
5337   libmarblewidget4
5338   libntrack-qt4-1
5339   libntrack0
5340   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
5341   libplasmaclock4a
5342   libplasmagenericshell4
5343   libprocesscore4a
5344   libprocessui4a
5345   libqalculate5
5346   libqedje0a
5347   libqtruby4shared2
5348   libqzion0a
5349   libruby1.8
5350   libscim8c2a
5351   libsmokekdecore4-3
5352   libsmokekdeui4-3
5353   libsmokekfile3
5354   libsmokekhtml3
5355   libsmokekio3
5356   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
5357   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
5358   libsmokekparts3
5359   libsmokektexteditor3
5360   libsmokekutils3
5361   libsmokenepomuk3
5362   libsmokephonon3
5363   libsmokeplasma3
5364   libsmokeqtcore4-3
5365   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
5366   libsmokeqtgui4-3
5367   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
5368   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
5369   libsmokeqtscript4-3
5370   libsmokeqtsql4-3
5371   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
5372   libsmokeqttest4-3
5373   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
5374   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
5375   libsmokeqtxml4-3
5376   libsmokesolid3
5377   libsmokesoprano3
5378   libtaskmanager4a
5379   libtidy-0.99-0
5380   libweather-ion4a
5381   libxklavier16
5382   libxxf86misc1
5383   okteta
5384   oxygencursors
5385   plasma-dataengines-addons
5386   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
5387   plasma-widget-lancelot
5388   plasma-widgets-addons
5389   plasma-widgets-workspace
5390   polkit-kde-1
5391   ruby1.8
5392   systemsettings
5393   update-notifier-common
5394 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5395
5396 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
5397 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
5398 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
5399 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
5400 </description>
5401         </item>
5402
5403         <item>
5404                 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
5405                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
5406                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
5407                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5408                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
5409 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
5410 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
5411 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
5412 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
5413 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
5414 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
5415 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
5416 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
5417
5418 &lt;p&gt;I found
5419 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
5420 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
5421 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
5422 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
5423 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
5424 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
5425
5426 &lt;pre&gt;
5427 #!/bin/sh
5428
5429 # Based on
5430 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
5431
5432 set -e
5433 set -x
5434
5435 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
5436     echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
5437     exit 1
5438 else
5439     host=&quot;$1&quot;
5440 fi
5441
5442 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
5443     echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
5444     exit 1
5445 fi
5446
5447 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
5448 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
5449 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
5450 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
5451
5452 img=$host.img
5453 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
5454 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
5455
5456 parted $img mklabel msdos
5457 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
5458 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
5459 parted $img set 1 boot on
5460
5461 modprobe dm-mod
5462 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
5463 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
5464
5465 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
5466 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
5467 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
5468
5469 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
5470 losetup -d /dev/loop0
5471 &lt;/pre&gt;
5472
5473 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
5474 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
5475
5476 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
5477 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
5478 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
5479 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
5480 </description>
5481         </item>
5482
5483         <item>
5484                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
5485                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
5486                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
5487                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
5488                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
5489 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
5490 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
5491 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
5492
5493 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
5494 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
5495 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
5496
5497 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
5498
5499 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5500
5501 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5502   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
5503   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
5504   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
5505   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
5506   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
5507   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
5508   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
5509   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
5510   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
5511   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
5512   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5513   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5514   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
5515   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
5516   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
5517   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
5518   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5519   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
5520   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5521   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
5522   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
5523   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5524   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
5525   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
5526   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
5527   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5528   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5529   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
5530   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5531   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
5532   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
5533   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5534   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
5535   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
5536   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
5537   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
5538   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
5539   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
5540   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
5541   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
5542   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
5543   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
5544   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
5545   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
5546   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
5547   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
5548   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
5549   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
5550   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
5551   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
5552   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
5553   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
5554   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5555   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
5556   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
5557   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
5558   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
5559   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
5560   zip
5561 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5562
5563 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
5564
5565 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5566   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
5567   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
5568   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
5569   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
5570   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
5571   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
5572   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
5573   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
5574   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
5575   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
5576   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
5577   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5578   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
5579   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5580   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
5581   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
5582   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5583   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
5584   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
5585   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
5586   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
5587   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
5588   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
5589   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
5590   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
5591   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
5592   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
5593   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
5594   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
5595 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5596
5597 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5598
5599 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5600   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5601 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5602
5603 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5604
5605 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5606 [nothing]
5607 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5608
5609 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
5610
5611 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5612
5613 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5614   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
5615   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5616   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
5617   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
5618   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
5619   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
5620   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5621   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
5622   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
5623   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5624   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
5625   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
5626   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
5627   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
5628   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
5629   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
5630   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
5631   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
5632   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
5633   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
5634   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
5635   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
5636   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
5637   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
5638   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
5639   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
5640   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
5641   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
5642   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
5643   ttf-sazanami-gothic
5644 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5645
5646 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5647
5648 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5649   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
5650   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
5651   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
5652   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
5653   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
5654   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
5655   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
5656   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
5657   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
5658   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
5659   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
5660   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
5661   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
5662   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
5663   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5664   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5665   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
5666   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
5667   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5668   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
5669   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5670   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
5671   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5672   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5673   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
5674   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
5675   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
5676   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
5677   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
5678   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
5679   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
5680   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
5681   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
5682 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5683
5684 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5685
5686 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5687   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
5688   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
5689   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
5690   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
5691   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5692   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
5693   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5694 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5695
5696 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5697
5698 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5699   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
5700 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5701 </description>
5702         </item>
5703
5704         <item>
5705                 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
5706                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
5707                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
5708                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5709                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
5710 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
5711 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
5712 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
5713 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
5714 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
5715 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
5716 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
5717
5718 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
5719 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
5720 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
5721 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
5722 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
5723 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
5724 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
5725 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
5726 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
5727 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
5728 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
5729 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
5730 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
5731 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
5732 </description>
5733         </item>
5734
5735         <item>
5736                 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
5737                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
5738                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
5739                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
5740                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5741
5742 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
5743 3D linked in from
5744 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
5745 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5746 </description>
5747         </item>
5748
5749         <item>
5750                 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
5751                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
5752                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
5753                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
5754                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
5755
5756 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
5757 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
5758 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
5759 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
5760 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
5761 :)&lt;/p&gt;
5762
5763 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
5764 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
5765 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
5766 It is called
5767 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
5768 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
5769 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
5770 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
5771 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
5772 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
5773
5774 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
5775 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
5776 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
5777 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
5778 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
5779 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
5780 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
5781 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
5782 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
5783 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
5784 </description>
5785         </item>
5786
5787         <item>
5788                 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
5789                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
5790                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
5791                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
5792                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
5793 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
5794 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
5795 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
5796 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
5797 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
5798 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
5799
5800 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
5801 («&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
5802 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
5803 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
5804 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
5805 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
5806 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
5807 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
5808 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
5809
5810 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
5811 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
5812 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
5813 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
5814 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
5815 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
5816 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
5817 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
5818 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
5819 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
5820
5821 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
5822 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
5823 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
5824 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
5825 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
5826 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
5827 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
5828 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
5829 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
5830 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
5831 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
5832 </description>
5833         </item>
5834
5835         <item>
5836                 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
5837                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
5838                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
5839                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5840                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
5841 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
5842 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;.  A few packages
5843 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
5844 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
5845 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
5846
5847 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
5848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
5849 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
5850 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
5851 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
5852 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
5853 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
5854 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
5855
5856 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
5857
5858 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5859 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
5860  perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
5861   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
5862 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
5863  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
5864 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5865
5866 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
5867 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
5868 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
5869 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
5870 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
5871 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
5872 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
5873 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
5874
5875 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
5876 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
5877 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
5878 dependencies
5879 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
5880 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5881
5882 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
5883 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
5884 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
5885 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
5886 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
5887 it.&lt;/p&gt;
5888 </description>
5889         </item>
5890
5891         <item>
5892                 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
5893                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
5894                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
5895                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5896                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
5897 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
5898 on my
5899 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
5900 work&lt;/a&gt; on
5901 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
5902 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
5903
5904 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
5905 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
5906 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
5907 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
5908
5909 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
5910 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
5911 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
5912
5913 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5914
5915 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
5916 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
5917 the web.
5918
5919 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
5920 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
5921 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
5922 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
5923 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
5924 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
5925
5926 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
5927 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
5928 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
5929 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
5930 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
5931 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry.  For
5932 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
5933 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
5934 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
5935 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
5936 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
5937 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
5938 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
5939 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
5940 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
5941 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5942
5943 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5944 ldapsearch -h ldap \
5945   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
5946   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
5947   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
5948   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
5949   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
5950   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
5951
5952 ldapsearch -h ldap \
5953   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
5954   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
5955   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
5956   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
5957   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
5958 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5959
5960 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
5961 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
5962 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
5963 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5964 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
5965
5966 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5967 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5968 objectclass: top
5969 objectclass: dnsdomain
5970 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5971 dc: tjener
5972 arecord: 10.0.2.2
5973 associateddomain: tjener.intern
5974
5975 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5976 objectclass: top
5977 objectclass: dnsdomain2
5978 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5979 dc: 2
5980 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
5981 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
5982 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5983
5984 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
5985 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
5986 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
5987 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
5988 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
5989 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
5990 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
5991 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
5992 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
5993 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
5994 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
5995 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
5996
5997 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
5998 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5999
6000 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6001 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6002   &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6003   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6004   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6005   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6006   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6007
6008 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6009   &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
6010 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6011
6012 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
6013 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
6014 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
6015
6016 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
6017 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
6018 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
6019 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
6020
6021 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
6022 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
6023 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
6024
6025 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
6026 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
6027 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
6028 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
6029 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
6030
6031 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
6032 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
6033 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
6034 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
6035 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
6036
6037 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
6038 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
6039 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
6040 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
6041 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
6042 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
6043
6044 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6045 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
6046     SUP top
6047     AUXILIARY
6048     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
6049           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
6050           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
6051           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
6052           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
6053     ))
6054 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6055
6056 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
6057 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
6058 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
6059 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
6060 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
6061 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
6062
6063 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6064
6065 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
6066 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
6067 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
6068 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
6069 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
6070
6071 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
6072 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
6073 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
6074 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
6075
6076 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6077 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
6078 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
6079 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6080
6081 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
6082 configuration it need.  The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
6083 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;.  The
6084 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
6085
6086 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6087 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6088 cn: dhcp
6089 objectClass: top
6090 objectClass: dhcpServer
6091 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6092 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6093
6094 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
6095 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
6096 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
6097 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
6098 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
6099 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
6100
6101 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6102 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6103 cn: DHCP Config
6104 objectClass: top
6105 objectClass: dhcpService
6106 objectClass: dhcpOptions
6107 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6108 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
6109 dhcpStatements: authoritative
6110 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
6111 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
6112 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
6113 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6114
6115 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
6116 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
6117 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
6118 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
6119 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
6120 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
6121 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
6122 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
6123 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
6124
6125 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
6126 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
6127 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
6128 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
6129 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter.  This is what a host object look
6130 like:&lt;/p&gt;
6131
6132 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6133 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6134 cn: hostname
6135 objectClass: top
6136 objectClass: dhcpHost
6137 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6138 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
6139 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6140
6141 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
6142 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
6143 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
6144 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
6145 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
6146 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
6147 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
6148 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
6149 structural object class.
6150
6151 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6152
6153 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
6154 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
6155 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
6156 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
6157 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
6158
6159 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
6160 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
6161 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
6162 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
6163 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
6164 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
6165
6166 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
6167 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
6168
6169 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6170 ou=services
6171   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
6172     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
6173     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6174       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6175         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6176     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6177       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6178         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6179     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
6180       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
6181 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6182
6183 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
6184 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
6185 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
6186 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
6187
6188 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
6189 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6190
6191 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6192 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6193 dc: hostname
6194 objectClass: top
6195 objectClass: dhcpHost
6196 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6197 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
6198 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6199 arecord: 10.11.12.13
6200 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6201 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
6202 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6203
6204 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
6205 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
6206 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
6207 </description>
6208         </item>
6209
6210         <item>
6211                 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
6212                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
6213                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
6214                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
6215                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
6216 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
6217 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
6218 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
6219 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
6220
6221 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
6222 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
6223
6224 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
6225 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
6226 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
6227 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
6228 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
6229 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
6230
6231 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
6232 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
6233 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
6234 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
6235 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
6236 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
6237
6238 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
6239 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
6240 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
6241 this:&lt;/p&gt;
6242
6243 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6244   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6245   cn: hostname
6246   objectClass: dhcphost
6247   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6248   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
6249   associateddomain: hostname.intern
6250   arecord: 10.11.12.13
6251   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6252   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
6253   ldapconfigsound: Y
6254 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6255
6256 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
6257 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
6258 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
6259 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
6260
6261 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
6262 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
6263 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
6264 that.  If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
6265 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
6266 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
6267 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
6268 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
6269
6270 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6271 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6272 </description>
6273         </item>
6274
6275         <item>
6276                 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
6277                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
6278                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
6279                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6280                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
6281 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
6282 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
6283 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
6284
6285 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
6286 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
6287 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
6288 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
6289 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
6290
6291 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
6292 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
6293 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
6294
6295 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
6296 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
6297 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
6298
6299 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6300 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
6301 #
6302 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
6303 #
6304 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
6305 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
6306 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
6307 #
6308 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
6309 # existence of attribute names.
6310 #
6311 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
6312 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
6313 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
6314 #
6315 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
6316 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
6317 #
6318 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
6319 #     SUP top
6320 #     AUXILIARY
6321 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
6322
6323 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
6324 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
6325     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
6326     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
6327         filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
6328         ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
6329             grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
6330             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
6331             attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
6332             # bass value on to clients
6333             eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
6334         done
6335     done
6336 fi
6337 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6338
6339 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
6340 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
6341 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
6342 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
6343 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6344
6345 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6346 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6347
6348 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
6349 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
6350 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
6351 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;.  I found its
6352 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
6353 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
6354 </description>
6355         </item>
6356
6357         <item>
6358                 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
6359                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
6360                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
6361                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
6362                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
6363 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
6364 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
6365 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
6366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
6367 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
6368 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
6369 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
6370 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
6371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
6372 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
6373 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
6374 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
6375 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
6376 </description>
6377         </item>
6378
6379         <item>
6380                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
6381                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
6382                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
6383                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
6384                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
6385 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
6386 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a summary of the
6387 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I&#39;m
6388 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
6389 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
6390 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
6391 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
6392
6393 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
6394 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
6395 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
6396 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
6397 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
6398
6399 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6400
6401 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6402   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6403   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
6404   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
6405   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6406   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
6407   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6408   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
6409   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
6410 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6411
6412 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6413
6414 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6415   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
6416   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
6417   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
6418   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
6419   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
6420   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
6421   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6422   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6423   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6424   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
6425   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
6426   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
6427   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
6428   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
6429   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
6430   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6431   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
6432   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
6433   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
6434   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
6435 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6436
6437 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
6438
6439 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6440   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
6441   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
6442   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6443   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6444   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
6445   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
6446   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
6447   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6448   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6449   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6450   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6451   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
6452   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
6453   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
6454   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
6455   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
6456   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
6457   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
6458   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
6459   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
6460   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
6461 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6462
6463 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
6464
6465 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6466   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
6467   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
6468   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
6469 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6470
6471 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
6472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
6473 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
6474 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
6475 the difference somewhat.
6476 </description>
6477         </item>
6478
6479         <item>
6480                 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
6481                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
6482                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
6483                 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6484                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
6485 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
6486 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
6487 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
6488 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
6489 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
6490 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
6491 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
6492 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
6493 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6494
6495 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
6496 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
6497 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
6498 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
6499 released.&lt;/p&gt;
6500
6501 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
6502 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
6503 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
6504 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
6505
6506 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
6507 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6508
6509 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
6510 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
6511 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
6512 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
6513 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
6514 </description>
6515         </item>
6516
6517         <item>
6518                 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
6519                 <link>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</link>
6520                 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
6521                 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
6522                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
6523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
6524 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
6525 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
6526 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
6527
6528 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
6529 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
6530 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
6531 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
6532
6533 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
6534 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
6535 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
6536 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
6537
6538 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
6539 the
6540 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
6541 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
6542 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
6543
6544 &lt;pre&gt;
6545 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
6546 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
6547 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
6548  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
6549         NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
6550         DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
6551 -       SUP top
6552 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
6553         MUST cn
6554         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
6555         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
6556 &lt;/pre&gt;
6557
6558 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
6559 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
6560 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
6561
6562 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6563 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6564 </description>
6565         </item>
6566
6567         <item>
6568                 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
6569                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
6570                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
6571                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
6572                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
6573 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
6574 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
6575 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
6576 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
6577 this:
6578
6579 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6580 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6581 tasksel --new-install
6582 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6583
6584 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
6585 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
6586 any output what so ever.
6587
6588 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
6589 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
6590 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
6591 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
6592 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
6593 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
6594 code like this:
6595
6596 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6597 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6598 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
6599 $cmd
6600 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6601
6602 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
6603 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
6604 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
6605 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
6606 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
6607 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
6608 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
6609
6610 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
6611 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
6612 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
6613 </description>
6614         </item>
6615
6616         <item>
6617                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
6618                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
6619                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
6620                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
6621                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
6622 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
6623 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
6624 finally made the upgrade logs available from
6625 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
6626 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
6627 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
6628 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
6629
6630 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
6631 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
6632 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
6633 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
6634 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
6635 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
6636 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
6637 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
6638
6639 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
6640 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
6641 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
6642 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
6643
6644 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
6645 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
6646 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
6647 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
6648 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
6649 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
6650 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
6651 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
6652
6653 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
6654 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
6655   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
6656   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
6657   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
6658   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
6659   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
6660   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6661   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6662   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
6663   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
6664   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
6665   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
6666   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6667   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6668   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6669   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6670   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6671   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
6672   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
6673   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
6674   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
6675   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
6676   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
6677   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
6678   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
6679   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
6680   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
6681   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
6682   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
6683
6684 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
6685
6686 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
6687   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
6688   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
6689   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
6690   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
6691   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
6692   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
6693   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
6694   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
6695   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
6696   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6697   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
6698   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
6699   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
6700   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
6701   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
6702   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
6703   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
6704   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
6705   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
6706   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
6707   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
6708   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
6709   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
6710   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6711   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
6712   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
6713   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
6714   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
6715   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6716   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
6717   zip&lt;/p&gt;
6718
6719 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
6720
6721 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
6722   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
6723   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
6724   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
6725   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
6726   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
6727   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6728   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6729   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
6730   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
6731   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
6732   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
6733   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6734   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6735   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6736   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6737   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6738   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
6739   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
6740   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
6741   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
6742   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
6743   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
6744   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
6745   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
6746   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
6747   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
6748   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
6749
6750 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
6751 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
6752   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6753   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
6754   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
6755   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6756   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
6757   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
6758   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6759   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
6760   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
6761   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
6762   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
6763   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
6764   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
6765   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
6766   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
6767   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6768   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6769   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
6770   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
6771   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6772   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
6773   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
6774   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6775   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6776   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
6777   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
6778   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
6779   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
6780   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
6781   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
6782   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
6783   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
6784   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
6785   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6786   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
6787   xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
6788
6789 </description>
6790         </item>
6791
6792         <item>
6793                 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
6794                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
6795                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
6796                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6797                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
6798 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
6799 have been discovered and reported in the process
6800 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
6801 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
6802 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
6803 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
6804 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
6805
6806 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
6807 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
6808 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
6809 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
6810 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
6811 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
6812
6813 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
6814 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
6815 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6816 is created.  The bug report
6817 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
6818 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
6819 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
6820 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
6821 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
6822 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
6823 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
6824 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
6825 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
6826 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
6827 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
6828 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
6829 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
6830
6831 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
6832 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
6833 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
6834
6835 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6836 #!/bin/sh
6837 set -ex
6838
6839 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
6840     desktop=$1
6841 else
6842     desktop=gnome
6843 fi
6844
6845 from=lenny
6846 to=squeeze
6847
6848 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
6849 unset LANG
6850 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
6851 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
6852 fuser -mv .
6853 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
6854 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6855 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
6856 #!/bin/sh
6857 exit 101
6858 EOF
6859 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
6860 exit_cleanup() {
6861     umount $tmpdir/proc
6862 }
6863 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
6864 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
6865 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
6866
6867 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
6868
6869 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
6870 # to return the correct answers.
6871 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
6872     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
6873
6874 # Include the desktop and laptop task
6875 for test in desktop laptop ; do
6876     echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
6877 #!/bin/sh
6878 exit 2
6879 EOF
6880     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
6881 done
6882
6883 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6884 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
6885 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
6886 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
6887
6888 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
6889 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6890 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6891 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
6892 fuser -mv
6893 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6894
6895 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
6896 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
6897 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
6898 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
6899 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
6900 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
6901
6902 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
6903 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
6904 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
6905 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
6906 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
6907 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
6908 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
6909
6910 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
6911 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
6912 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
6913 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
6914 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
6915 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
6916 </description>
6917         </item>
6918
6919         <item>
6920                 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
6921                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
6922                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
6923                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
6924                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
6925 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
6926 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
6927 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
6928 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
6929 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
6930 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
6931
6932 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
6933 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
6934 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
6935
6936 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6937 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
6938 previous=N
6939 PREVLEVEL=
6940 RUNLEVEL=
6941 runlevel=S
6942 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
6943 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
6944 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
6945 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6946
6947 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
6948 script.&lt;/p&gt;
6949
6950 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6951 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
6952 previous=N
6953 PREVLEVEL=N
6954 RUNLEVEL=S
6955 runlevel=S
6956 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6957
6958 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
6959 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
6960 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
6961
6962 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
6963 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
6964 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
6965 </description>
6966         </item>
6967
6968         <item>
6969                 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
6970                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
6971                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
6972                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
6973                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
6974 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
6975 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
6976 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
6977 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
6978 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
6979 </description>
6980         </item>
6981
6982         <item>
6983                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
6984                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
6985                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
6986                 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
6987                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
6988 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
6989 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
6990 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
6991 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
6992
6993 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6994 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
6995   vendor                    count
6996   Dell Computer Corporation     1
6997     PowerEdge 1750              1
6998   IBM                           1
6999     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
7000   Intel                         2
7001   [no-dmi-info]                 3
7002 maintainer:~#
7003 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7004
7005 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
7006 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
7007 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
7008 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
7009 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
7010
7011 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
7012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
7013 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
7014 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
7015 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
7016 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
7017 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
7018 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
7019 </description>
7020         </item>
7021
7022         <item>
7023                 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
7024                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
7025                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
7026                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
7027                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
7028 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
7029 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
7030 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
7031 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
7032
7033 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
7034 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
7035 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
7036 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
7037 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
7038 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
7039
7040 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
7041 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
7042 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
7043 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
7044 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
7045 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
7046 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
7047 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
7048
7049 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
7050 </description>
7051         </item>
7052
7053         <item>
7054                 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
7055                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
7056                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
7057                 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
7058                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
7059 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
7060 issues are known and should be solved:
7061
7062 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
7063
7064 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
7065 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
7066 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
7067 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
7068 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
7069
7070 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
7071 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
7072 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
7073 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
7074
7075 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
7076 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
7077 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
7078 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
7079 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
7080 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
7081 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
7082 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
7083
7084 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7085
7086 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
7087 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
7088 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
7089 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
7090
7091 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7092 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7093 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
7094 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7095
7096 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
7097 </description>
7098         </item>
7099
7100         <item>
7101                 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
7102                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
7103                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
7104                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7105                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
7106 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
7107 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
7108 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
7109
7110 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
7111 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
7112 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
7113 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
7114 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
7115 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
7116 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
7117 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
7118 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
7119 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
7120 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
7121 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
7122 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
7123 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
7124
7125 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
7126 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
7127 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
7128 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
7129 &quot;external&quot; media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
7130 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
7131 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
7132 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
7133 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
7134 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
7135 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
7136
7137 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
7138 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
7139 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
7140 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
7141 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
7142 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
7143
7144 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
7145 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
7146 </description>
7147         </item>
7148
7149         <item>
7150                 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
7151                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
7152                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
7153                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
7154                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
7155 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
7156 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
7157 expected, if I am to believe the
7158 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
7159 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
7160 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
7161 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
7162 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
7163 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
7164 version.&lt;/p&gt;
7165
7166 More information about
7167 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
7168 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
7169 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
7170 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
7171
7172 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7173 CONCURRENCY=none
7174 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7175
7176 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7177 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7178 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
7179 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7180 </description>
7181         </item>
7182
7183         <item>
7184                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
7185                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
7186                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
7187                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
7188                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
7189 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
7190 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
7191 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
7192 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
7193 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
7194 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
7195 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
7196
7197 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
7198 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
7199 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
7200
7201 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7202 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
7203 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7204
7205 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
7206 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
7207
7208 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
7209 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
7210 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
7211 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
7212 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
7213 </description>
7214         </item>
7215
7216         <item>
7217                 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
7218                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
7219                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
7220                 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
7221                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
7222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
7223 has been
7224 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
7225
7226 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
7227 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
7228 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
7229 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
7230 based boot system.  Tollef is
7231 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
7232 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
7233 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
7234 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
7235 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
7236
7237 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
7238 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
7239 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
7240 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
7241 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
7242 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
7243
7244 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
7245 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
7246 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
7247 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
7248 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
7249 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
7250 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
7251 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
7252 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
7253 </description>
7254         </item>
7255
7256         <item>
7257                 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
7258                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
7259                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
7260                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
7261                 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
7262 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
7263 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
7264 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
7265 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
7266 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
7267 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
7268
7269 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7270 CONCURRENCY=makefile
7271 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7272
7273 &lt;p&gt;That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
7274 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
7275 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
7276 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
7277 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
7278 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
7279 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
7280
7281 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
7282 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
7283 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
7284 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
7285 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7286
7287 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
7288 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
7289 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
7290 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
7291
7292 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7293 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7294 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
7295 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7296 </description>
7297         </item>
7298
7299         <item>
7300                 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
7301                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
7302                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
7303                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
7304                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
7305 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
7306 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
7307 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
7308 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
7309 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
7310 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
7311
7312 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
7313 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
7314 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
7315 </description>
7316         </item>
7317
7318         <item>
7319                 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
7320                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
7321                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
7322                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7323                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
7324 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
7325 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
7326 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
7327 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
7328 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
7329
7330 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
7331 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
7332 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
7333 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
7334 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
7335 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
7336 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
7337 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
7338 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
7339 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
7340 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
7341 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
7342
7343 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
7344 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
7345 </description>
7346         </item>
7347
7348         <item>
7349                 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
7350                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
7351                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
7352                 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
7353                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
7354 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
7355 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
7356 funded
7357 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
7358 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
7359 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
7360 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
7361 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
7362 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
7363
7364 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
7365 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
7366 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
7367
7368 &lt;ul&gt;
7369
7370 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
7371
7372 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
7373    clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
7374
7375 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
7376    &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
7377    based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
7378
7379 &lt;/ul&gt;
7380
7381 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
7382 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
7383 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
7384
7385 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
7386 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
7387 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
7388 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
7389 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
7390 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
7391
7392 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
7393 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
7394 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
7395 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
7396 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
7397 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
7398 insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7399 </description>
7400         </item>
7401
7402         <item>
7403                 <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
7404                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</link>
7405                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</guid>
7406                 <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
7407                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
7408 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
7409 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
7410 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
7411 dager siden kom
7412 &lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
7413 rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
7414 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
7415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
7416 höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;
7417
7418 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7419 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
7420 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
7421 företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
7422 exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
7423 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7424
7425 &lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
7426 href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
7427 piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
7428 href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
7429 Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7430
7431 &lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
7432 href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
7433 på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7434 </description>
7435         </item>
7436
7437         <item>
7438                 <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
7439                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>
7440                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
7441                 <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7442                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Kom over
7443 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
7444 tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
7445 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
7446 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
7447 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
7448 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
7449 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
7450 </description>
7451         </item>
7452
7453         <item>
7454                 <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
7455                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>
7456                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
7457                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7458                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
7459 IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
7460 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
7461 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
7462 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
7463 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
7464 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
7465 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
7466 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
7467 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
7468 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
7469 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
7470 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
7471 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
7472 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
7473 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
7474 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
7475 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
7476 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
7477 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;
7478
7479 &lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
7480 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
7481 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
7482 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
7483 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
7484 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
7485 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
7486 betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
7487 </description>
7488         </item>
7489
7490         <item>
7491                 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
7492                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
7493                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
7494                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7495                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
7496 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
7497 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
7498
7499 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
7500 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
7501 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
7502 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
7503 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
7504 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
7505 occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
7506 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
7507 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
7508 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
7509 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
7510
7511 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
7512 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
7513 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
7514 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
7515 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
7516 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
7517 and the company behind it is running
7518 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
7519 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
7520 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
7521 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
7522 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
7523 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
7524 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
7525 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
7526
7527 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
7528 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
7529 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
7530 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
7531 </description>
7532         </item>
7533
7534         <item>
7535                 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
7536                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
7537                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
7538                 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7539                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
7540 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
7541 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
7542 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
7543 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
7544 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
7545 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
7546 </description>
7547         </item>
7548
7549         <item>
7550                 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
7551                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
7552                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
7553                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
7554                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
7555 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
7556 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
7557 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
7558 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
7559 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
7560 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
7561 application.&lt;/p&gt;
7562
7563 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
7564 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
7565 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
7566 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
7567 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
7568 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
7569 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
7570
7571 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
7572 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
7573 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
7574 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
7575
7576 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
7577 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
7578 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
7579 </description>
7580         </item>
7581
7582         <item>
7583                 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
7584                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
7585                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
7586                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7587                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
7588 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
7589 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
7590 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
7591 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
7592 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
7593 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
7594 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
7595 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
7596 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
7597 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
7598 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
7599 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
7600 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
7601 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7602 </description>
7603         </item>
7604
7605         <item>
7606                 <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
7607                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
7608                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
7609                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7610                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
7611 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
7612 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
7613 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
7614 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
7615 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
7616
7617 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
7618 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
7619 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
7620 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
7621 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
7622 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
7623 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
7624 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
7625 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
7626 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
7627 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
7628 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
7629 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
7630
7631 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
7632 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
7633 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
7634 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
7635
7636 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
7637 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
7638
7639 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
7640 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
7641 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
7642 </description>
7643         </item>
7644
7645         <item>
7646                 <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
7647                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>
7648                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
7649                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
7650                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
7651 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
7652 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
7653 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
7654 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
7655 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
7656 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
7657 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
7658 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
7659 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
7660 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
7661 &lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7662 </description>
7663         </item>
7664
7665         <item>
7666                 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
7667                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
7668                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
7669                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7670                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
7671 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
7672 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
7673 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
7674 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
7675 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
7676 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
7677 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
7678
7679 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
7680 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
7681 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
7682 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
7683 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
7684 </description>
7685         </item>
7686
7687         <item>
7688                 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
7689                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
7690                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
7691                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
7692                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
7693 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
7694 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
7695 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
7696 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
7697 notes are available on
7698 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
7699 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
7700 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
7701 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
7702 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
7703 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
7704 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
7705 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
7706 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
7707
7708 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
7709 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
7710 </description>
7711         </item>
7712
7713         </channel>
7714 </rss>