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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          1st April 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
  32 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
  33 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
  34 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
  35 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
  36 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
  37 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
  38 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
  39 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
  40 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
  41 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
  42 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
  43 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
  44
  45 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
  46 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
  47 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
  48 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
  49 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
  50 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
  51 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
  52 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
  53 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
  54 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
  55 Linux.</p>
  56
  57 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
  58 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
  59 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
  60 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
  61 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
  62 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
  63 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
  64 Windows before metro).</p>
  65
  66 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
  67 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
  68 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
  69 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
  70 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
  71 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
  72 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
  73 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
  74 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
  75 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
  76 old Windows binaries, check it out by
  77 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
  78 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
  79 image.</p>
  80
  81       </div>
  82       <div class="tags">
  83
  84
  85         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
  86
  87
  88       </div>
  89     </div>
  90     <div class="padding"></div>
  91
  92     <div class="entry">
  93       <div class="title">
  94         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
  95       </div>
  96       <div class="date">
  97         30th March 2014
  98       </div>
  99       <div class="body">
 100         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 101 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
 102 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
 103 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
 104 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
 105
 106 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 107
 108 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
 109 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
 110 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
 111 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
 112 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
 113
 114 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
 115 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
 116 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
 117
 118 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
 119 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
 120 hunger.</p>
 121
 122 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 123 project?</strong></p>
 124
 125 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
 126 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
 127 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
 128 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
 129 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
 130 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
 131 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
 132 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
 133 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
 134 running.  I just loved it.</p>
 135
 136 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 137 Edu?</strong></p>
 138
 139 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
 140 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
 141 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
 142 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
 143 be made of steel.</p>
 144
 145 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 146 Edu?</strong></p>
 147
 148 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
 149
 150 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
 151 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
 152 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
 153 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
 154 or dropped.</p>
 155
 156 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
 157 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
 158 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
 159 discourage many people too.</p>
 160
 161 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 162
 163 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
 164 Virtualbox.</p>
 165
 166
 167 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 168 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 169
 170 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
 171 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
 172 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
 173 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
 174 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
 175 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
 176 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
 177 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
 178 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
 179
 180       </div>
 181       <div class="tags">
 182
 183
 184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 185
 186
 187       </div>
 188     </div>
 189     <div class="padding"></div>
 190
 191     <div class="entry">
 192       <div class="title">
 193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
 194       </div>
 195       <div class="date">
 196         25th March 2014
 197       </div>
 198       <div class="body">
 199         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
 200 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
 201 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
 202 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
 203 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
 204 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
 205 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
 206 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
 207 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
 208
 209 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
 210 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
 211 looked a given way.  Such
 212 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
 213 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
 214 called a
 215 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
 216 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
 217 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
 218 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
 219 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
 220 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
 221 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
 222 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
 223 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
 224 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
 225 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
 226 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
 227 There are several commercial services around providing such
 228 timestamping.  A quick search for
 229 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
 230 service</a>" pointed me to at least
 231 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
 232 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
 233 Vadis</a>,
 234 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
 235 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
 236 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
 237 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
 238
 239 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
 240 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
 241 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
 242 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
 243 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
 244 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
 245 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
 246 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
 247 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
 248 Greifswald.</p>
 249
 250 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
 251 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
 252 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
 253 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
 254 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
 255
 256 <p><blockquote><pre>
 257 #!/bin/sh
 258 set -e
 259 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
 260 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
 261 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
 262 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
 263 cafile=chain.txt
 264 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
 265     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
 266 fi
 267 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
 268     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
 269 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
 270 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
 271 base64 < "$resfile"
 272 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
 273 </pre></blockquote></p>
 274
 275 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
 276 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
 277 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
 278 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
 279 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
 280 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
 281 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
 282 changed.</p>
 283
 284 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
 285 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
 286 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
 287 to set up?</p>
 288
 289       </div>
 290       <div class="tags">
 291
 292
 293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 294
 295
 296       </div>
 297     </div>
 298     <div class="padding"></div>
 299
 300     <div class="entry">
 301       <div class="title">
 302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
 303       </div>
 304       <div class="date">
 305         21st March 2014
 306       </div>
 307       <div class="body">
 308         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
 309 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
 310 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
 311 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
 312 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
 313 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
 314 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
 315
 316 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
 317 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
 318 tried using
 319 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
 320 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
 321 and program
 322 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
 323 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
 324 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
 325 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
 326 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
 327 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
 328 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
 329 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
 330 this method.</p>
 331
 332 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
 333 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
 334 problem is
 335 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
 336 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
 337 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
 338 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
 339 DVD structures, as the python library
 340 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
 341 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
 342 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
 343 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
 344 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
 345 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
 346
 347 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
 348 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
 349
 350       </div>
 351       <div class="tags">
 352
 353
 354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 355
 356
 357       </div>
 358     </div>
 359     <div class="padding"></div>
 360
 361     <div class="entry">
 362       <div class="title">
 363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
 364       </div>
 365       <div class="date">
 366         14th March 2014
 367       </div>
 368       <div class="body">
 369         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
 370 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
 371 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
 372 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
 373 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
 374 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
 375 release (0.2).</p>
 376
 377 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
 378 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
 379 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
 380 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
 381 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
 382 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
 383 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
 384 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
 385 and build using
 386 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
 387 with a user with sudo access to become root:
 388
 389 <pre>
 390 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
 391   freedom-maker
 392 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
 393   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
 394   u-boot-tools
 395 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
 396 </pre>
 397
 398 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
 399 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
 400 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
 401 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
 402 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
 403 kpartx call.</p>
 404
 405 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
 406 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
 407 the preseed values:</p>
 408
 409 <pre>
 410 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
 411 </pre>
 412
 413 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
 414 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
 415 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
 416 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
 417 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
 418 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
 419
 420 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 421 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 422 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 423 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 424 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 425 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 426
 427       </div>
 428       <div class="tags">
 429
 430
 431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 432
 433
 434       </div>
 435     </div>
 436     <div class="padding"></div>
 437
 438     <div class="entry">
 439       <div class="title">
 440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 441       </div>
 442       <div class="date">
 443         12th March 2014
 444       </div>
 445       <div class="body">
 446         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
 447 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
 448 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
 449 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
 450 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
 451 document this better when one of the customers of
 452 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
 453 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
 454 get this working are the following:</p>
 455
 456 <p><ol>
 457
 458 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
 459 example host here.</li>
 460
 461 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
 462 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
 463
 464 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
 465 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
 466
 467 </ol></p>
 468
 469 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
 470 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
 471 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
 472 started).</p>
 473
 474 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
 475 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
 476
 477 <p><blockquote><pre>
 478 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
 479 Export list for nas-server:
 480 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
 481 root@tjener:~#
 482 </pre></blockquote></p>
 483
 484 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
 485 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
 486 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
 487 NFS access.</p>
 488
 489 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
 490 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
 491 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
 492
 493 <p><blockquote><pre>
 494 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 495 </pre></blockquote></p>
 496
 497 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
 498 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
 499 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
 500 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
 501
 502 <p><blockquote><pre>
 503 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 504 objectClass: automount
 505 cn: nas-server
 506 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 507
 508 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 509 objectClass: top
 510 objectClass: automountMap
 511 ou: auto.nas-server
 512
 513 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 514 objectClass: automount
 515 cn: /
 516 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
 517 </pre></blockquote></p>
 518
 519 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
 520 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
 521 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
 522
 523 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
 524 the storage server directly by just visiting the
 525 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
 526 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
 527
 528       </div>
 529       <div class="tags">
 530
 531
 532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
 533
 534
 535       </div>
 536     </div>
 537     <div class="padding"></div>
 538
 539     <div class="entry">
 540       <div class="title">
 541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
 542       </div>
 543       <div class="date">
 544         22nd February 2014
 545       </div>
 546       <div class="body">
 547         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
 548 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
 549 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
 550 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
 551 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
 552 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
 553 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
 554 proper home since then.</p>
 555
 556 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
 557 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
 558 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
 559 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
 560 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
 561
 562 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
 563 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
 564 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
 565 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
 566 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
 567 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
 568 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
 569 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
 570 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
 571
 572       </div>
 573       <div class="tags">
 574
 575
 576         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 577
 578
 579       </div>
 580     </div>
 581     <div class="padding"></div>
 582
 583     <div class="entry">
 584       <div class="title">
 585         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
 586       </div>
 587       <div class="date">
 588          3rd February 2014
 589       </div>
 590       <div class="body">
 591         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
 592 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
 593 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
 594 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
 595 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
 596 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
 597 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
 598 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
 599 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
 600
 601 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
 602 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
 603 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
 604 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
 605 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
 606 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
 607
 608 <p><blockquote><pre>
 609 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
 610 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
 611 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
 612 dhclient /dev/eth0
 613 </pre></blockquote></p>
 614
 615 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
 616 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
 617 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
 618
 619 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
 620 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
 621 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
 622 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
 623 side.</p>
 624
 625 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
 626 stuff:</p>
 627
 628 <p><blockquote><pre>
 629 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 630 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
 631 EOF
 632 apt-get update
 633 apt-get dist-upgrade
 634 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
 635     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
 636 update-alternatives --config runsystem
 637 </pre></blockquote></p>
 638
 639 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
 640 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
 641 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
 642 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
 643 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
 644 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
 645 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
 646 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
 647 ssh instead.
 648
 649 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
 650 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
 651 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
 652 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
 653 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
 654 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
 655
 656 <p><blockquote><pre>
 657 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 658 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
 659 EOF
 660 </pre></blockquote></p>
 661
 662 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
 663 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
 664 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
 665 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
 666
 667 <p><blockquote><pre>
 668 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
 669 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
 670 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
 671 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
 672 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
 673 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
 674 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
 675 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
 676 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 677 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
 678 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
 679 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
 680 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
 681 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
 682 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
 683 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
 684 #
 685 </pre></blockquote></p>
 686
 687 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
 688 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
 689 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
 690 command line stuff.<p>
 691
 692       </div>
 693       <div class="tags">
 694
 695
 696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 697
 698
 699       </div>
 700     </div>
 701     <div class="padding"></div>
 702
 703     <div class="entry">
 704       <div class="title">
 705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
 706       </div>
 707       <div class="date">
 708         29th January 2014
 709       </div>
 710       <div class="body">
 711         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
 712 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
 713 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
 714 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
 715 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
 716 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
 717 investigated in
 718 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
 719 from December 2013, in the article
 720 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
 721 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
 722 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
 723 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
 724 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
 725 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
 726 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
 727 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
 728
 729 <p><blockquote>
 730 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
 731 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
 732 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
 733 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
 734 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
 735 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
 736 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
 737 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
 738 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
 739 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
 740 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
 741 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
 742
 743 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
 744 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
 745 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
 746 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
 747 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
 748 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
 749 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
 750 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
 751 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
 752 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
 753 </blockquote><p>
 754
 755 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
 756 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
 757 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
 758 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
 759 summarized like this:</p>
 760
 761 <p><blockquote>
 762 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
 763 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
 764 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
 765 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
 766 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
 767 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
 768 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
 769 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
 770 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
 771 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
 772 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
 773 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
 774 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
 775 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
 776 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
 777 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
 778 </blockquote></p>
 779
 780 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
 781 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
 782 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
 783 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
 784
 785 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 786 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 787 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 788
 789       </div>
 790       <div class="tags">
 791
 792
 793         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 794
 795
 796       </div>
 797     </div>
 798     <div class="padding"></div>
 799
 800     <div class="entry">
 801       <div class="title">
 802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
 803       </div>
 804       <div class="date">
 805         14th January 2014
 806       </div>
 807       <div class="body">
 808         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
 809 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
 810 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
 811 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
 812 the source.  The company behind it provide
 813 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
 814 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
 815 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
 816 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
 817 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
 818 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
 819 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
 820 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
 821 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
 822 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
 823 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
 824 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
 825 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
 826 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
 827 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
 828 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
 829 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
 830 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
 831 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
 832
 833 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
 834
 835 <ul>
 836
 837   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
 838   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
 839   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
 840
 841 </ul>
 842
 843 <p>You can
 844 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 845 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 846 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 847 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 848 include a test suite check.</p>
 849
 850       </div>
 851       <div class="tags">
 852
 853
 854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 855
 856
 857       </div>
 858     </div>
 859     <div class="padding"></div>
 860
 861     <div class="entry">
 862       <div class="title">
 863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
 864       </div>
 865       <div class="date">
 866         25th December 2013
 867       </div>
 868       <div class="body">
 869         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 870 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
 871 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
 872 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
 873 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
 874 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
 875 George</a>.</p>
 876
 877 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
 878
 879 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 880
 881 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
 882 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
 883 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
 884 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
 885 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
 886 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
 887
 888 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
 889 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
 890 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
 891 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
 892 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
 893 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
 894 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
 895 to help building another school's informational education concept from
 896 scratch.</p>
 897
 898 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
 899 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
 900 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
 901
 902 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
 903 and cycling.</p>
 904
 905 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 906 project?</strong></p>
 907
 908 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
 909 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
 910 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
 911 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
 912 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
 913 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
 914
 915 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
 916 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
 917 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
 918 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
 919 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
 920 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
 921 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
 922 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
 923 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
 924
 925 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
 926 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
 927 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
 928 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
 929
 930 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 931 Edu?</strong></p>
 932
 933 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
 934 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
 935 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
 936 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
 937 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
 938 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
 939 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
 940 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
 941 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
 942 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
 943 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
 944 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
 945 that it rocks!</p>
 946
 947 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
 948 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
 949 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
 950 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
 951 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
 952 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
 953 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
 954
 955 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 956 Edu?</strong></p>
 957
 958 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
 959 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
 960 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
 961 can list a few points about that:</p>
 962
 963 <ul>
 964
 965  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 966  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 967  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
 968
 969 </ul>
 970
 971 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
 972
 973 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 974
 975 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
 976 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
 977 year.</p>
 978
 979 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
 980 run text tools. I use
 981 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
 982 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
 983 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
 984 based full-featured student management software with the two),
 985 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
 986 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
 987 coloured world called the WWW, I use
 988 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
 989 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
 990 e-mail.</p>
 991
 992 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
 993 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
 994 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
 995 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
 996 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
 997 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
 998 Facebook now ;).</p>
 999
1000 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1001 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1002
1003 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
1004 side is what I have experienced.</p>
1005
1006 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
1007 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
1008 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
1009 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
1010 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
1011 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
1012 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
1013 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
1014 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
1015 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
1016 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
1017 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
1018 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
1019 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
1020 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
1021 plain criminal.</p>
1022
1023 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
1024 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
1025 founded an association named
1026 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
1027 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
1028 area of free and open source software, for example the
1029 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
1030 Teckids and are the youth programme of
1031 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
1032 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
1033 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
1034 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
1035 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
1036 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
1037
1038 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
1039 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
1040 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
1041 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
1042 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
1043 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
1044 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
1045 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
1046 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
1047 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
1048 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
1049 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
1050
1051 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
1052 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
1053 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
1054 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
1055
1056 <!--
1057
1058 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
1059
1060 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
1061 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
1062
1063  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
1064    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
1065    of the decision makers above;
1066  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
1067    knowledge about free software
1068
1069 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
1070
1071 -->
1072
1073       </div>
1074       <div class="tags">
1075
1076
1077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1078
1079
1080       </div>
1081     </div>
1082     <div class="padding"></div>
1083
1084     <div class="entry">
1085       <div class="title">
1086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
1087       </div>
1088       <div class="date">
1089          6th December 2013
1090       </div>
1091       <div class="body">
1092         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
1093 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1094 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
1095 had a new school administrator show up on
1096 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
1097 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
1098 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
1099 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
1100 Germany a few years ago.</p>
1101
1102 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1103
1104 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
1105 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
1106 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
1107 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
1108
1109 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
1110 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
1111 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
1112 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
1113 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
1114 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
1115 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
1116 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
1117 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
1118
1119 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1120 project?</strong></p>
1121
1122 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
1123 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
1124 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
1125 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
1126
1127 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1128 Edu?</strong></p>
1129
1130 <ul>
1131   <li>Quick installation,</li>
1132   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
1133   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
1134   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
1135     single company,</li>
1136   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
1137     experience and problem solutions.</li>
1138 </ul>
1139
1140 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1141 Edu?</strong></p>
1142
1143 <ul>
1144   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
1145   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
1146   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
1147   working again reliably.
1148
1149   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
1150   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
1151   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
1152   as their base.
1153
1154   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
1155   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
1156   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
1157   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
1158   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
1159   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
1160
1161   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
1162   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
1163   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
1164   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
1165   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
1166   schemes.</li>
1167
1168   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
1169   compared to Debian.</li>
1170
1171 </ul>
1172
1173 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
1174 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
1175 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
1176 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
1177
1178 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1179
1180 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
1181 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
1182 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
1183 programming languages for teaching.</p>
1184
1185 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1186 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1187
1188 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
1189
1190 <ul>
1191
1192   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
1193     teaching and learning.</li>
1194
1195   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
1196     home, and at their working place without running into license or
1197     conversion problems.</li>
1198
1199   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
1200     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
1201     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
1202     science, not products.</li>
1203
1204   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
1205     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
1206
1207 </ul>
1208
1209       </div>
1210       <div class="tags">
1211
1212
1213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1214
1215
1216       </div>
1217     </div>
1218     <div class="padding"></div>
1219
1220     <div class="entry">
1221       <div class="title">
1222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
1223       </div>
1224       <div class="date">
1225         30th November 2013
1226       </div>
1227       <div class="body">
1228         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
1229 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
1230 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
1231 experiment with interesting network technology, the
1232 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
1233 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
1234 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
1235 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
1236 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
1237 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
1238 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
1239 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
1240 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
1241 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
1242 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
1243 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
1244 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
1245 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
1246 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
1247 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
1248
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="tags">
1251
1252
1253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1254
1255
1256       </div>
1257     </div>
1258     <div class="padding"></div>
1259
1260     <div class="entry">
1261       <div class="title">
1262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
1263       </div>
1264       <div class="date">
1265         24th November 2013
1266       </div>
1267       <div class="body">
1268         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
1269 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
1270 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
1271 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
1272 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
1273 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
1274 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
1275 is working on.  I checked the
1276 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
1277 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
1278 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
1279 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1280 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1281 These are the release notes:</p>
1282
1283 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
1284
1285 <ul>
1286
1287   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1288    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1289    up.</li>
1290
1291   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
1292
1293   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1294    Matthias Klose.</li>
1295
1296   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1297    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
1298
1299   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1300    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
1301    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
1302
1303 </ul>
1304
1305 <p>You can
1306 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1307 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1308 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1309 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1310 include a testsuite check.</p>
1311
1312       </div>
1313       <div class="tags">
1314
1315
1316         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1317
1318
1319       </div>
1320     </div>
1321     <div class="padding"></div>
1322
1323     <div class="entry">
1324       <div class="title">
1325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
1326       </div>
1327       <div class="date">
1328         21st November 2013
1329       </div>
1330       <div class="body">
1331         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
1332 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
1333 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
1334 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
1335 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
1336 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
1337 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
1338 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
1339 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
1340 TED talk
1341 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
1342 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
1343 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
1344
1345 <blockquote>
1346
1347 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
1348 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
1349 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
1350 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
1351 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
1352 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
1353 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
1354 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
1355 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
1356 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
1357 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
1358
1359 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
1360 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
1361 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
1362
1363 </blockquote>
1364
1365 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
1366 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
1367 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
1368 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
1369 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
1370 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
1371 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
1372 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
1373 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
1374
1375       </div>
1376       <div class="tags">
1377
1378
1379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1380
1381
1382       </div>
1383     </div>
1384     <div class="padding"></div>
1385
1386     <div class="entry">
1387       <div class="title">
1388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
1389       </div>
1390       <div class="date">
1391         13th November 2013
1392       </div>
1393       <div class="body">
1394         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
1395 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
1396 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
1397 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
1398 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
1399 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
1400 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
1401 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
1402 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
1403 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
1404 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
1405 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1406 right away. :)</p>
1407
1408       </div>
1409       <div class="tags">
1410
1411
1412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1413
1414
1415       </div>
1416     </div>
1417     <div class="padding"></div>
1418
1419     <div class="entry">
1420       <div class="title">
1421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
1422       </div>
1423       <div class="date">
1424         10th November 2013
1425       </div>
1426       <div class="body">
1427         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
1428 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
1429 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
1430 MR3040 as a mesh node using
1431 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
1432
1433 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
1434 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
1435 and downloaded
1436 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
1437 recommended firmware image</a>
1438 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
1439 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
1440 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
1441 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
1442 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
1443
1444 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
1445 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
1446 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
1447 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
1448 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
1449 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
1450 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
1451 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
1452 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
1453 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
1454 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
1455 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
1456 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
1457
1458 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
1459 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
1460 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
1461 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
1462 them:</p>
1463
1464 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
1465
1466 <pre>
1467
1468 config interface 'loopback'
1469         option ifname 'lo'
1470         option proto 'static'
1471         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
1472         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
1473
1474 config globals 'globals'
1475         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
1476
1477 config interface 'lan'
1478         option ifname 'eth0'
1479         option type 'bridge'
1480         option proto 'dhcp'
1481         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
1482         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
1483         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
1484         option ip6assign '60'
1485
1486 config interface 'mesh'
1487         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1488         option mtu '1528'
1489         option proto 'batadv'
1490         option mesh 'bat0'
1491 </pre>
1492
1493 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
1494 <pre>
1495
1496 config wifi-device 'radio0'
1497         option type 'mac80211'
1498         option channel '11'
1499         option hwmode '11ng'
1500         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
1501         option htmode 'HT20'
1502         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
1503         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
1504         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
1505         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
1506         option disabled '0'
1507
1508 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
1509         option device 'radio0'
1510         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1511         option network 'mesh'
1512         option encryption 'none'
1513         option mode 'adhoc'
1514         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
1515         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
1516 </pre>
1517 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
1518 <pre>
1519
1520 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
1521         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
1522         option 'aggregated_ogms'
1523         option 'ap_isolation'
1524         option 'bonding'
1525         option 'fragmentation'
1526         option 'gw_bandwidth'
1527         option 'gw_mode'
1528         option 'gw_sel_class'
1529         option 'log_level'
1530         option 'orig_interval'
1531         option 'vis_mode'
1532         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
1533         option 'distributed_arp_table'
1534         option 'network_coding'
1535         option 'hop_penalty'
1536
1537 # yet another batX instance
1538 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
1539 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
1540 </pre>
1541
1542 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
1543 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
1544 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
1545
1546       </div>
1547       <div class="tags">
1548
1549
1550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1551
1552
1553       </div>
1554     </div>
1555     <div class="padding"></div>
1556
1557     <div class="entry">
1558       <div class="title">
1559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
1560       </div>
1561       <div class="date">
1562          2nd November 2013
1563       </div>
1564       <div class="body">
1565         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1566 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1567 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1568 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1569 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1570
1571 <p><pre>
1572 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1573 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1574 # Provides:          rsyslog
1575 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1576 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1577 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1578 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1579 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1580 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1581 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1582 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1583 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1584 ### END INIT INFO
1585 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1586 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1587 </pre></p>
1588
1589 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1590 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1591 info/comments.</p>
1592
1593 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1594 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1595
1596 <p><pre>
1597 #!/bin/sh
1598
1599 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1600 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1601 # and status_of_proc is working.
1602 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1603
1604 #
1605 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1606
1607 #
1608 do_start()
1609 {
1610         # Return
1611         #   0 if daemon has been started
1612         #   1 if daemon was already running
1613         #   2 if daemon could not be started
1614         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
1615                 || return 1
1616         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1617                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
1618                 || return 2
1619         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1620         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1621         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1622 }
1623
1624 #
1625 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1626 #
1627 do_stop()
1628 {
1629         # Return
1630         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
1631         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
1632         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
1633         #   other if a failure occurred
1634         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1635         RETVAL="$?"
1636         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
1637         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1638         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1639         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1640         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1641         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
1642         # sleep for some time.
1643         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
1644         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
1645         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1646         rm -f $PIDFILE
1647         return "$RETVAL"
1648 }
1649
1650 #
1651 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1652 #
1653 do_reload() {
1654         #
1655         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1656         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1657         # then implement that here.
1658         #
1659         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1660         return 0
1661 }
1662
1663 SCRIPTNAME=$1
1664 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
1665 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
1666 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
1667     script="$1"
1668     shift
1669     . $script
1670 else
1671     exit 0
1672 fi
1673
1674 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1675 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1676
1677 # Exit if the package is not installed
1678 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
1679
1680 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1681 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
1682
1683 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1684 . /lib/init/vars.sh
1685
1686 case "$1" in
1687   start)
1688         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
1689         do_start
1690         case "$?" in
1691                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1692                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1693         esac
1694         ;;
1695   stop)
1696         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
1697         do_stop
1698         case "$?" in
1699                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
1700                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
1701         esac
1702         ;;
1703   status)
1704         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
1705         ;;
1706   #reload|force-reload)
1707         #
1708         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1709         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
1710         #
1711         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
1712         #do_reload
1713         #log_end_msg $?
1714         #;;
1715   restart|force-reload)
1716         #
1717         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
1718         # 'force-reload' alias
1719         #
1720         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
1721         do_stop
1722         case "$?" in
1723           0|1)
1724                 do_start
1725                 case "$?" in
1726                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
1727                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
1728                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
1729                 esac
1730                 ;;
1731           *)
1732                 # Failed to stop
1733                 log_end_msg 1
1734                 ;;
1735         esac
1736         ;;
1737   *)
1738         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
1739         exit 3
1740         ;;
1741 esac
1742
1743 :
1744 </pre></p>
1745
1746 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1747 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1748 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
1749 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
1750
1751 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1752 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1753 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1754 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
1755 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
1756
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="tags">
1759
1760
1761         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1762
1763
1764       </div>
1765     </div>
1766     <div class="padding"></div>
1767
1768     <div class="entry">
1769       <div class="title">
1770         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
1771       </div>
1772       <div class="date">
1773          1st November 2013
1774       </div>
1775       <div class="body">
1776         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
1777 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1778 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1779 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1780 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1781 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1782 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1783 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1784 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1785 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1786 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1787 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
1788
1789 <p>The source is now available from
1790 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
1791
1792       </div>
1793       <div class="tags">
1794
1795
1796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1797
1798
1799       </div>
1800     </div>
1801     <div class="padding"></div>
1802
1803     <div class="entry">
1804       <div class="title">
1805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
1806       </div>
1807       <div class="date">
1808         27th October 2013
1809       </div>
1810       <div class="body">
1811         <p>The
1812 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
1813 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1814 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1815 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1816 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1817 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
1818 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1819 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1820 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1821 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1822 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1823 Raspberry Pi.</p>
1824
1825 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1826 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1827 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1828 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1829 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1830 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1831 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
1832 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1833 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1834 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1835 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1836 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
1837 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1838 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1839 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
1840 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1841 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1842 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1843 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1844 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1845 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1846 available from
1847 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1848 upstream project page</a>.</p>
1849
1850 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1851 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1852 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1853 list:</p>
1854
1855 <p><pre>
1856 #!/bin/sh
1857 set -e # Exit on first error
1858 rootdir="$1"
1859 cd "$rootdir"
1860 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
1861 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1862 EOF
1863 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1864 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1865 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1866     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1867 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1868 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1869 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1870 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1871 </pre></p>
1872
1873 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1874 to build the image:</p>
1875
1876 <pre>
1877 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1878     --variant minbase \
1879     --arch armel \
1880     --distribution jessie \
1881     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1882     --image test.img \
1883     --size 600M \
1884     --bootsize 64M \
1885     --boottype vfat \
1886     --log-level debug \
1887     --verbose \
1888     --no-kernel \
1889     --no-extlinux \
1890     --root-password raspberry \
1891     --hostname raspberrypi \
1892     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1893     --customize `pwd`/customize \
1894     --package netbase \
1895     --package git-core \
1896     --package binutils \
1897     --package ca-certificates \
1898     --package wget \
1899     --package kmod
1900 </pre></p>
1901
1902 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1903 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1904 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1905 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
1906 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1907 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1908 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
1909
1910 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1911 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
1912 build dependency list.</p>
1913
1914 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1915 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1916 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
1917 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
1918
1919       </div>
1920       <div class="tags">
1921
1922
1923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
1924
1925
1926       </div>
1927     </div>
1928     <div class="padding"></div>
1929
1930     <div class="entry">
1931       <div class="title">
1932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
1933       </div>
1934       <div class="date">
1935         21st October 2013
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="body">
1938         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
1939 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
1940 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
1941 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
1942 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
1943 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
1944 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
1945 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
1946
1947 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
1948 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
1949 instead, I started playing with a
1950 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
1951 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
1952 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
1953 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
1954 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
1955 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
1956 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
1957 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
1958 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
1959 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
1960 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
1961 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
1962 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
1963 every client on the local network.</p>
1964
1965 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
1966 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
1967 and a script
1968 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
1969 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
1970 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
1971 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
1972 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
1973 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
1974 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
1975 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
1976 support.</p>
1977
1978 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
1979 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
1980
1981 <p><pre>
1982 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
1983     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
1984 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
1985 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
1986 %
1987 </pre></p>
1988
1989 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
1990 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
1991 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
1992 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
1993 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
1994 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
1995
1996 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
1997 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
1998 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
1999
2000 <p><table>
2001
2002 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
2003 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
2004 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
2005 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
2006 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
2007 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
2008
2009 </table></p>
2010
2011 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
2012 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
2013 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
2014 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
2015 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
2016 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
2017 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
2018
2019       </div>
2020       <div class="tags">
2021
2022
2023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2024
2025
2026       </div>
2027     </div>
2028     <div class="padding"></div>
2029
2030     <div class="entry">
2031       <div class="title">
2032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
2033       </div>
2034       <div class="date">
2035         19th October 2013
2036       </div>
2037       <div class="body">
2038         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
2039 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
2040 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
2041 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
2042 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
2043 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
2044 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
2045 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
2046
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="tags">
2049
2050
2051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2052
2053
2054       </div>
2055     </div>
2056     <div class="padding"></div>
2057
2058     <div class="entry">
2059       <div class="title">
2060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
2061       </div>
2062       <div class="date">
2063         15th October 2013
2064       </div>
2065       <div class="body">
2066         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2067 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2068 these. :)</p>
2069
2070 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2071 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2072 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2073 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2074 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2075 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2076 hope you will to. :)</p>
2077
2078 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2079 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
2080 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
2081 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
2082 donated.  Are you next?</p>
2083
2084 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2085 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2086 statement under the heading
2087 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
2088 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2089 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2090 too.</p>
2091
2092       </div>
2093       <div class="tags">
2094
2095
2096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2097
2098
2099       </div>
2100     </div>
2101     <div class="padding"></div>
2102
2103     <div class="entry">
2104       <div class="title">
2105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
2106       </div>
2107       <div class="date">
2108         11th October 2013
2109       </div>
2110       <div class="body">
2111         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
2112 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
2113 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
2114 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
2115 successful examples like
2116 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
2117 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
2118 (see
2119 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
2120 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
2121 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
2122 can be seen from their
2123 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
2124 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
2125 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
2126 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
2127 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
2128
2129 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
2130 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
2131 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
2132 my recent involvement in
2133 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
2134 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
2135 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
2136 when possible, given that most communication between people are
2137 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
2138 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
2139 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
2140 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
2141 important over the years.</p>
2142
2143 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
2144 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
2145 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
2146 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
2147 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
2148 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
2149 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
2150 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
2151 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
2152 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
2153 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
2154 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
2155 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
2156 speakers about this talk (from
2157 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
2158
2159 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
2160
2161 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
2162 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
2163 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
2164 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
2165 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
2166 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
2167 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
2168 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
2169 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
2170 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
2171 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
2172 that project (from
2173 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
2174
2175 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
2176
2177 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
2178 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
2179 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
2180 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
2181 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
2182 based community mesh networks.</p>
2183
2184 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
2185 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
2186 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
2187 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
2188 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
2189 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
2190 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
2191 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
2192 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
2193
2194 <p><table>
2195 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
2196 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
2197 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
2198 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
2199 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
2200 </table></p>
2201
2202 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
2203 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
2204 VillageTelco about
2205 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
2206 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
2207 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
2208 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
2209 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
2210 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
2211
2212 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
2213 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
2214 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
2215 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
2216
2217 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
2218 us on IRC, either channel
2219 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
2220 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
2221 irc.freenode.net.</p>
2222
2223 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
2224 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
2225 and Innovation called
2226 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
2227 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
2228 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
2229 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
2230 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
2231 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
2232 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
2233 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
2234
2235 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
2236 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
2237 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
2238 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
2239 mesh system.</p>
2240
2241       </div>
2242       <div class="tags">
2243
2244
2245         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2246
2247
2248       </div>
2249     </div>
2250     <div class="padding"></div>
2251
2252     <div class="entry">
2253       <div class="title">
2254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
2255       </div>
2256       <div class="date">
2257          8th October 2013
2258       </div>
2259       <div class="body">
2260         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
2261 Salvador had published a
2262 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
2263 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
2264 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
2265 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
2266 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
2267 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
2268 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
2269 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
2270 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
2271 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
2272 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
2273 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
2274 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
2275 computers without hard drives by installing one central
2276 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
2277
2278 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
2279
2280 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
2281
2282 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
2283 me know. :)</p>
2284
2285       </div>
2286       <div class="tags">
2287
2288
2289         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2290
2291
2292       </div>
2293     </div>
2294     <div class="padding"></div>
2295
2296     <div class="entry">
2297       <div class="title">
2298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
2299       </div>
2300       <div class="date">
2301         29th September 2013
2302       </div>
2303       <div class="body">
2304         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
2305 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
2306 complete announcement text can be found at
2307 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
2308 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
2309
2310 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
2311 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
2312 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
2313 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
2314
2315       </div>
2316       <div class="tags">
2317
2318
2319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2320
2321
2322       </div>
2323     </div>
2324     <div class="padding"></div>
2325
2326     <div class="entry">
2327       <div class="title">
2328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
2329       </div>
2330       <div class="date">
2331         27th September 2013
2332       </div>
2333       <div class="body">
2334         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
2335 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2336 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2337 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2338
2339 <ul>
2340
2341 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2342 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2343
2344 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2345 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2346
2347 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2348 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2349 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2350 (Youtube)</li>
2351
2352 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2353 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2354
2355 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2356 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2357
2358 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2359 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2360 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2361
2362 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2363 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2364 (Youtube)</li>
2365
2366 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2367 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2368
2369 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2370 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2371
2372 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2373 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2374 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2375
2376 </ul>
2377
2378 <p>A larger list is available from
2379 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2380 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2381
2382 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2383 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2384 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2385 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2386 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2387 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2388 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2389 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2390 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2391 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2392 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2393
2394       </div>
2395       <div class="tags">
2396
2397
2398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2399
2400
2401       </div>
2402     </div>
2403     <div class="padding"></div>
2404
2405     <div class="entry">
2406       <div class="title">
2407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="date">
2410         16th September 2013
2411       </div>
2412       <div class="body">
2413         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2414 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
2415
2416 <blockquote>
2417 <p>Hi,</p>
2418
2419 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
2420 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2421 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
2422
2423 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
2424 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
2425 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
2426 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
2427
2428 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
2429 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
2430
2431 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
2432 compared to beta1:</p>
2433
2434 <ul>
2435
2436 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
2437 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
2438 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
2439 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
2440 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
2441 main server.</li>
2442 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
2443 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
2444 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
2445 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
2446 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
2447
2448 </ul>
2449
2450 <p>Where to get it:</p>
2451
2452 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2453
2454 <ul>
2455 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
2456 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
2457 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
2458 </ul>
2459
2460 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
2461
2462 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
2463 <ul>
2464 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
2465 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
2466 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
2467 </ul>
2468
2469 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
2470
2471 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
2472 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
2473 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
2474 as the other isos.</p>
2475
2476 <p>How to report bugs</p>
2477
2478 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
2479 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2480
2481
2482 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
2483
2484 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2485 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2486 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2487 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2488 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2489 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2490 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2491 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2492 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2493 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2494 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2495 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2496 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2497
2498 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2499 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2500 Squeeze release.</p>
2501
2502 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
2503
2504 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2505 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2506 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2507 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2508 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
2509 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2510 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2511 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2512 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2513 directory.</p>
2514
2515
2516 <p>cheers,
2517 <br>        Holger</p>
2518 </blockquote>
2519
2520       </div>
2521       <div class="tags">
2522
2523
2524         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2525
2526
2527       </div>
2528     </div>
2529     <div class="padding"></div>
2530
2531     <div class="entry">
2532       <div class="title">
2533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
2534       </div>
2535       <div class="date">
2536         10th September 2013
2537       </div>
2538       <div class="body">
2539         <p>I was introduced to the
2540 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2541 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2542 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2543 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2544 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2545 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2546 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2547 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2548
2549 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2550 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2551 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2552 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2553 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2554
2555 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2556 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2557 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2558 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2559 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2560 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2561 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2562 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2563 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2564 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2565 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2566 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2567 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2568 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2569 missing in Debian).</p>
2570
2571 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2572 scripts
2573 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2574 and a administrative web interface
2575 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2576 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2578 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2579 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2580 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2581 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2582 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2583 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2584 this is really working yet, see
2585 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2586 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2587 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2588 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2589 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2590 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2591 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2592
2593 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2594 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2595 at.</p>
2596
2597 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2598
2599 <ol>
2600
2601 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2602 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2603 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2604 to the Debian installer:<p>
2605 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2606
2607 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2608 install on.</li>
2609
2610 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2611 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2612
2613 </ol>
2614
2615 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2616
2617 <ol>
2618
2619 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2620 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2621 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2622 <pre>
2623 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2624 </pre></li>
2625 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2626 <pre>
2627 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2628    apt-key add -
2629 apt-get update
2630 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2631 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2632 </pre></li>
2633 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2634
2635 </ol>
2636
2637 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2638 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2639 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2640 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2641 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2642
2643 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2644 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2645 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2646 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2647
2648 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2649 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2650 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2651 irc.debian.org and the
2652 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2653 mailing list</a>.</p>
2654
2655 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2656 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2657 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2658 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2659 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2660 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2661
2662       </div>
2663       <div class="tags">
2664
2665
2666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2667
2668
2669       </div>
2670     </div>
2671     <div class="padding"></div>
2672
2673     <div class="entry">
2674       <div class="title">
2675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2676       </div>
2677       <div class="date">
2678         22nd August 2013
2679       </div>
2680       <div class="body">
2681         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2682 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
2683 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
2684
2685 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
2686
2687 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2688 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2689
2690 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2691
2692 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2693 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2694 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2695 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2696 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2697 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2698 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2699 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
2700 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2701 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2702 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2703 desktop contains
2704 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2705 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2706 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2707 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2708
2709 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
2710 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
2711 release.</p>
2712
2713 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2714 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2715 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2716 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2717 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
2718 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
2719 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
2720 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
2721 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
2722 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
2723 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
2724
2725 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2726
2727 <ul>
2728
2729 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
2730     work also without a attached tty.</li>
2731 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
2732     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
2733     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
2734     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
2735     required).</li>
2736
2737 </ul>
2738
2739 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2740
2741 <ul>
2742
2743 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
2744 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
2745 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
2746 stick ISO image.</li>
2747 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
2748 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
2749 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
2750     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
2751     cope with this.</li>
2752 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
2753 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
2754     empty password hashes.</li>
2755 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
2756     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
2757     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
2758
2759 </ul>
2760
2761 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2762
2763 <ul>
2764
2765 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2766     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2767 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
2768     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
2769
2770 </ul>
2771
2772 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2773
2774 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2775
2776 <ul>
2777
2778 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2779
2780 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2781
2782 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
2783
2784 </ul>
2785
2786 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2787 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
2788
2789 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2790
2791 <ul>
2792
2793 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2794 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2795 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
2796
2797 </ul>
2798
2799 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2800 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
2801
2802
2803 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2804
2805 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2806
2807       </div>
2808       <div class="tags">
2809
2810
2811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2812
2813
2814       </div>
2815     </div>
2816     <div class="padding"></div>
2817
2818     <div class="entry">
2819       <div class="title">
2820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
2821       </div>
2822       <div class="date">
2823         18th August 2013
2824       </div>
2825       <div class="body">
2826         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2827 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2828 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2829 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2830 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2831 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2832 currently on the disk.</p>
2833
2834 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2835 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
2836 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2837 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2838 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2839 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2840 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2841 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2842 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2843 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2844 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2845 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2846 the broken disks.</p>
2847
2848       </div>
2849       <div class="tags">
2850
2851
2852         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2853
2854
2855       </div>
2856     </div>
2857     <div class="padding"></div>
2858
2859     <div class="entry">
2860       <div class="title">
2861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
2862       </div>
2863       <div class="date">
2864          2nd August 2013
2865       </div>
2866       <div class="body">
2867         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
2868 have worked on a Norwegian
2869 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2870 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2871 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
2872 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
2873 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
2874 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
2875 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
2876 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
2877 progress of the translation:</p>
2878
2879 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2880
2881 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
2882 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
2883 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
2884 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
2885 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
2886 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
2887 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
2888 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
2889 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
2890 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
2891 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
2892
2893 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2894 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2895 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2896 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2897 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2898 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
2899 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
2900 project files currently available from
2901 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2902
2903 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2904 the updated
2905 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2906 and
2907 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2908 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2909 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2910 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2911
2912       </div>
2913       <div class="tags">
2914
2915
2916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2917
2918
2919       </div>
2920     </div>
2921     <div class="padding"></div>
2922
2923     <div class="entry">
2924       <div class="title">
2925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2926       </div>
2927       <div class="date">
2928         27th July 2013
2929       </div>
2930       <div class="body">
2931         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2932 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2933
2934 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2935 2013-07-27</strong></p>
2936
2937 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2938 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2939
2940 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2941
2942 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2943 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2944 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2945 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2946 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2947 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2948 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2949 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2950 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2951 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2952 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2953 desktop contains
2954 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2955 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2956 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2957 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2958
2959 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2960 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2961 Squeeze release.</p>
2962
2963 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2964 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2965 release.</p>
2966
2967 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2968
2969 <ul>
2970
2971 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2972    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
2973 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2974    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2975    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2976    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2977    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
2978 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
2979 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
2980 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2981    crash bugs.</li>
2982
2983 </ul>
2984
2985 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2986
2987 <ul>
2988
2989 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2990    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
2991 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2992    netinst CD.</li>
2993 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2994    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
2995 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2996    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2997    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
2998 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2999    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
3000    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
3001 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
3002    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
3003    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
3004 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
3005    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
3006 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
3007
3008 </ul>
3009
3010 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3011
3012 <ul>
3013
3014 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
3015 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
3016     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
3017 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
3018
3019 </ul>
3020
3021 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3022
3023 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3024
3025 <ul>
3026
3027 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
3028
3029 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
3030
3031 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
3032
3033 </ul>
3034
3035 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
3036 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
3037
3038 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3039
3040 <ul>
3041
3042 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
3043 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
3044 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
3045
3046 </ul>
3047
3048 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
3049 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
3050
3051
3052 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3053
3054 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3055
3056       </div>
3057       <div class="tags">
3058
3059
3060         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3061
3062
3063       </div>
3064     </div>
3065     <div class="padding"></div>
3066
3067     <div class="entry">
3068       <div class="title">
3069         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
3070       </div>
3071       <div class="date">
3072         17th July 2013
3073       </div>
3074       <div class="body">
3075         <p>Today I switched to
3076 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3077 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3078 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
3080 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3081 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3082 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3083 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3084 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3085 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3086 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3087 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3088 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3089 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3090 station from now on.</p>
3091
3092 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3093 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3094 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3095 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3096 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3097 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3098 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3099 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3100 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3101 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3102 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3103 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3104
3105 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3106 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3107 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3108 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3109 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3110 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3111 parameters are tuned:</p>
3112
3113 <ul>
3114
3115 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3116     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3117
3118 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3119     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3120     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3121
3122 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3123     systems.</li>
3124
3125 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3126     /etc/fstab.</li>
3127
3128 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3129
3130 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3131     cron.daily).</li>
3132
3133 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3134     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3135
3136 </ul>
3137
3138 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3139 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3140 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3141 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3142 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3143 from getting the data on the disk (see
3144 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3145 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3146 right thing to do.</p>
3147
3148 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3149 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3150 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3151
3152 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3153 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3154 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3155 instead of during my work.</p>
3156
3157 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3158 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3159
3160 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3161 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3162 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3163
3164 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3165 there.</p>
3166
3167 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3168 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3169 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3170 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3171 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3172 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3173 back.</p>
3174
3175       </div>
3176       <div class="tags">
3177
3178
3179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3180
3181
3182       </div>
3183     </div>
3184     <div class="padding"></div>
3185
3186     <div class="entry">
3187       <div class="title">
3188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
3189       </div>
3190       <div class="date">
3191         10th July 2013
3192       </div>
3193       <div class="body">
3194         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3195 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3196 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3197 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3198 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3199 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3200 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3201 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3202
3203 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3204 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3205 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3206 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3207 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3208 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3209 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3210 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3211 lock up when I download a new
3212 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3213 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3214 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3215
3216 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3217 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3218 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3219 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3220 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3221 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3222
3223 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3224 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3225 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3226 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3227 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3228 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3229
3230 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3231 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3232 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3233 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3234 exist).</p>
3235
3236       </div>
3237       <div class="tags">
3238
3239
3240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3241
3242
3243       </div>
3244     </div>
3245     <div class="padding"></div>
3246
3247     <div class="entry">
3248       <div class="title">
3249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
3250       </div>
3251       <div class="date">
3252          9th July 2013
3253       </div>
3254       <div class="body">
3255         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3256 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3257 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3258 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3259 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3260 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3261 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3262
3263 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3264 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3265 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3266 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3267 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3268
3269       </div>
3270       <div class="tags">
3271
3272
3273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3274
3275
3276       </div>
3277     </div>
3278     <div class="padding"></div>
3279
3280     <div class="entry">
3281       <div class="title">
3282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
3283       </div>
3284       <div class="date">
3285          5th July 2013
3286       </div>
3287       <div class="body">
3288         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3289 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3290 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3291 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3292 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3293 ended up picking a
3294 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3295 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3296 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3297 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3298 on that below.</p>
3299
3300 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3301 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3302 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3303 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3304 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3305 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3306 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3307 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3308 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3309
3310 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3311 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3312 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3313 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3314 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3315 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3316 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3317
3318 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3319 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3320
3321 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3322 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3323 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3324 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3325 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3326 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3327 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3328 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3329 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3330 kernel developers as
3331 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3332 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3333 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3334 Lenovo forums, both for
3335 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3336 2012-11-10</a> and for
3337 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
3338 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3339 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3340 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3341 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3342 There is even a
3343 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3344 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3345 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3346
3347 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3348 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3349 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3350 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3351 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3352 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3353 fixed. :)</p>
3354
3355       </div>
3356       <div class="tags">
3357
3358
3359         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3360
3361
3362       </div>
3363     </div>
3364     <div class="padding"></div>
3365
3366     <div class="entry">
3367       <div class="title">
3368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
3369       </div>
3370       <div class="date">
3371          4th July 2013
3372       </div>
3373       <div class="body">
3374         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3375 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3376 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3377 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3378 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3379 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3380 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3381 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3382 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3383
3384 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3385 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3386 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3387 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3388 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3389 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3390 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3391
3392 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3393 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3394 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3395 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3396 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3397 new laptop now. :)</p>
3398
3399 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3400
3401       </div>
3402       <div class="tags">
3403
3404
3405         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3406
3407
3408       </div>
3409     </div>
3410     <div class="padding"></div>
3411
3412     <div class="entry">
3413       <div class="title">
3414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3415       </div>
3416       <div class="date">
3417          3rd July 2013
3418       </div>
3419       <div class="body">
3420         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3421 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3422
3423 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
3424 2013-07-03</strong></p>
3425
3426 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3427 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3428
3429 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3430
3431 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3432 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3433 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3434 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3435 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3436 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3437 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3438 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3439 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3440 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3441 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3442 desktop contains
3443 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3444 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3445 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3446 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3447
3448 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3449 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3450 Squeeze release.</p>
3451
3452 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3453 <ul>
3454   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
3455   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
3456     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
3457     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
3458   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
3459     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
3460     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
3461   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
3462     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
3463     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
3464     too.</li>
3465   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
3466     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
3467 </ul>
3468 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3469 <ul>
3470   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
3471   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
3472   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
3473     up for some language options.</li>
3474   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
3475   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
3476   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
3477     d-i is doing it.</li>
3478   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
3479     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
3480   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
3481     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
3482     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
3483   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
3484     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
3485   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
3486   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
3487     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
3488   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
3489     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
3490 </ul>
3491 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3492 <ul>
3493   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3494     available yet (698840).</li>
3495   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
3496 </ul>
3497 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3498
3499 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3500 <ul>
3501   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
3502   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
3503   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
3504 </ul>
3505
3506 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
3507 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
3508
3509 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3510 <ul>
3511   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
3512   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
3513   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
3514 </ul>
3515
3516 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
3517 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
3518
3519 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3520
3521 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3522
3523       </div>
3524       <div class="tags">
3525
3526
3527         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3528
3529
3530       </div>
3531     </div>
3532     <div class="padding"></div>
3533
3534     <div class="entry">
3535       <div class="title">
3536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
3537       </div>
3538       <div class="date">
3539         25th June 2013
3540       </div>
3541       <div class="body">
3542         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3543 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3544 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3545 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3546 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3547 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3548 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3549 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3550 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3551 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3552 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3553
3554 <p><pre>
3555 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3556 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3557 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3558 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3559 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3560 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3561 firmware-ipw2x00
3562 firmware-ipw2x00
3563 Preconfiguring packages ...
3564 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3565 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3566 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3567 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3568 #
3569 </pre></p>
3570
3571 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3572 printed instead:</p>
3573
3574 <p><pre>
3575 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3576 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3577 #
3578 </pre></p>
3579
3580 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3581 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3582
3583 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3584 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3585 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3586 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3587 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3588 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3589 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3590 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3591 machine.</p>
3592
3593 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3594 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3595 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3596 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3597 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3598 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3599
3600       </div>
3601       <div class="tags">
3602
3603
3604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3605
3606
3607       </div>
3608     </div>
3609     <div class="padding"></div>
3610
3611     <div class="entry">
3612       <div class="title">
3613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
3614       </div>
3615       <div class="date">
3616         22nd June 2013
3617       </div>
3618       <div class="body">
3619         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3620 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
3621 which check that services are running, working, and return the
3622 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
3623 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
3624 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
3625 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
3626 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
3627 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
3628
3629 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
3630 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
3631 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
3632 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
3633 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
3634 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
3635 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
3636 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
3637 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
3638 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
3639 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
3640 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
3641 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
3642 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
3643
3644 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
3645 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
3646 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
3647 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
3648 the problem.</p>
3649
3650 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
3651 please join us on
3652 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3653 irc.debian.org</a> and the
3654 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
3655 list.</p>
3656
3657       </div>
3658       <div class="tags">
3659
3660
3661         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3662
3663
3664       </div>
3665     </div>
3666     <div class="padding"></div>
3667
3668     <div class="entry">
3669       <div class="title">
3670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
3671       </div>
3672       <div class="date">
3673         17th June 2013
3674       </div>
3675       <div class="body">
3676         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3677 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
3678 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
3679 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
3680 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
3681 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
3682 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
3683 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
3684
3685 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3686
3687 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
3688 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
3689 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
3690 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
3691 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
3692 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
3693 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
3694 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
3695 field.</p>
3696
3697 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
3698 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
3699 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
3700 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
3701 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
3702 the only one we have in our country.</p>
3703
3704 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3705 project?</strong></p>
3706
3707 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
3708 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
3709 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
3710 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
3711 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
3712 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
3713 ways to contribute.</p>
3714
3715 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
3716 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
3717 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
3718 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
3719 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
3720 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
3721 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
3722 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
3723 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
3724 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
3725
3726 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3727 Edu?</strong></p>
3728
3729 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
3730 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
3731 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
3732 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
3733 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
3734 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
3735 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
3736 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
3737
3738 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
3739 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
3740 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
3741 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
3742 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
3743 project.</p>
3744
3745 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3746 Edu?</strong></p>
3747
3748 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
3749 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
3750 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
3751 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
3752 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
3753 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
3754 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
3755 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
3756 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
3757
3758 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
3759 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
3760 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
3761 on.</p>
3762
3763 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3764
3765 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
3766 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
3767 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
3768 Enlightenment project a lot!),
3769 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
3770 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
3771 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
3772 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
3773 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
3774
3775 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3776 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3777
3778 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
3779 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
3780 that:</p>
3781
3782 <ul>
3783
3784 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
3785
3786 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
3787     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
3788     of teenagers more?</li>
3789
3790 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
3791     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
3792     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
3793     them!)</li>
3794
3795 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
3796     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
3797     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
3798
3799 </ul>
3800
3801 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
3802 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
3803 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
3804 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
3805 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
3806
3807       </div>
3808       <div class="tags">
3809
3810
3811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3812
3813
3814       </div>
3815     </div>
3816     <div class="padding"></div>
3817
3818     <div class="entry">
3819       <div class="title">
3820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
3821       </div>
3822       <div class="date">
3823         12th June 2013
3824       </div>
3825       <div class="body">
3826         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
3827 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3828 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
3829 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
3830 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
3831 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
3832
3833 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3834
3835 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
3836 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
3837 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
3838
3839 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
3840 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
3841 each other.</p>
3842
3843 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3844 project?</strong></p>
3845
3846 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
3847 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
3848 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
3849 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
3850 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
3851 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
3852 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
3853 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
3854 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
3855 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
3856 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
3857 we'll get there one day.</p>
3858
3859 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3860 Edu?</strong></p>
3861
3862 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
3863 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
3864 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
3865 very high quality work.</p>
3866
3867 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
3868 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
3869 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
3870 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
3871 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
3872
3873 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3874 Edu?</strong></p>
3875
3876 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
3877 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
3878 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
3879
3880 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
3881 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
3882 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
3883 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
3884 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
3885 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
3886 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
3887 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
3888 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
3889 currently.</p>
3890
3891 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
3892 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
3893 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
3894 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
3895 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
3896 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
3897 autonomous.</p>
3898
3899 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3900
3901 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
3902 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
3903 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
3904 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
3905 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
3906
3907 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
3908 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
3909 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
3910 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
3911 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
3912 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
3913 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
3914 X.</p>
3915
3916 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
3917 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
3918 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
3919 it :p)
3920
3921 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3922 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3923
3924 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
3925 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
3926 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
3927 that.</p>
3928
3929 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
3930 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
3931 advantage of that.</p>
3932
3933 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
3934 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
3935 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
3936 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
3937 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
3938 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
3939 best solution for them.</p>
3940
3941 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
3942 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
3943 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
3944
3945       </div>
3946       <div class="tags">
3947
3948
3949         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3950
3951
3952       </div>
3953     </div>
3954     <div class="padding"></div>
3955
3956     <div class="entry">
3957       <div class="title">
3958         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
3959       </div>
3960       <div class="date">
3961         11th June 2013
3962       </div>
3963       <div class="body">
3964         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3965 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3966 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3967 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3968 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3969 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3970 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3971 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3972 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3973 i915 driver used by the
3974 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3975 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3976
3977 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3978 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3979 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3980 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3981 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3982
3983 <pre>
3984 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3985 update-initramfs -u -k all
3986 </pre>
3987
3988 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3989 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3990 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3991 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3992 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3993 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3994 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3995 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3996 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3997 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3998 number.</p>
3999
4000 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4001 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4002
4003 <p><pre>
4004 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4005     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4006     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4007  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4008  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4009     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4010  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4011     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4012  Latency: 0
4013  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4014  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4015  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4016  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4017  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4018  Capabilities: <access denied>
4019  Kernel driver in use: i915
4020 </pre></p>
4021
4022 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4023
4024 <p><pre>
4025 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4026        ...
4027         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4028         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4029        ...
4030 }
4031 </pre></p>
4032
4033 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4034 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4035 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4036 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4037 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4038 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4039 yet shown up in
4040 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4041 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4042 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4043 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4045 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4046
4047 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4048 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4049 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4050 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4051 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4052 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4053 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4054 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4055 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4056 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4057 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4058 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4059
4060 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4061 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4062 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4063 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4064 backlight.</p>
4065
4066       </div>
4067       <div class="tags">
4068
4069
4070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4071
4072
4073       </div>
4074     </div>
4075     <div class="padding"></div>
4076
4077     <div class="entry">
4078       <div class="title">
4079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4080       </div>
4081       <div class="date">
4082         10th June 2013
4083       </div>
4084       <div class="body">
4085         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4086 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4087
4088 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
4089 2013-06-10</strong></p>
4090
4091 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4092 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4093
4094 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4095
4096 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4097 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4098 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4099 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4100 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4101 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4102 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4103 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4104 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4105 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4106 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4107 desktop contains
4108 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4109 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4110 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4111 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4112
4113 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4114 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4115 Squeeze release.</p>
4116
4117 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4118
4119 <ul>
4120
4121 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
4122 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
4123 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
4124 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
4125 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
4126
4127 </ul>
4128
4129 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4130
4131 <ul>
4132
4133 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
4134 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
4135 <li>New Romanian translation.
4136 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
4137 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
4138 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
4139 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
4140 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
4141 <li>More testsuite tests.
4142 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
4143 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
4144
4145 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
4146 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
4147
4148 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
4149 them up with GOsa².</li>
4150
4151 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
4152
4153 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
4154 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
4155 entered password). </li>
4156
4157 </ul>
4158
4159 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4160
4161 <ul>
4162
4163 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
4164
4165 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4166 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
4167 missing import feature).</li>
4168
4169 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
4170
4171 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
4172 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
4173 unfixed.</li>
4174
4175 </ul>
4176
4177 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4178
4179 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4180
4181 <ul>
4182
4183 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
4184
4185 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
4186
4187 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
4188
4189 </ul>
4190
4191 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
4192 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
4193
4194 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4195
4196 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4197
4198       </div>
4199       <div class="tags">
4200
4201
4202         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4203
4204
4205       </div>
4206     </div>
4207     <div class="padding"></div>
4208
4209     <div class="entry">
4210       <div class="title">
4211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
4212       </div>
4213       <div class="date">
4214          5th June 2013
4215       </div>
4216       <div class="body">
4217         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
4218 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
4219 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
4220 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
4221 the project:
4222
4223 <ol>
4224
4225 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
4226   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
4227   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
4228   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
4229   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
4230
4231 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
4232   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
4233   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
4234   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
4235   #698840</a>.</li>
4236
4237 </ol>
4238
4239 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
4240 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
4241 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
4242
4243       </div>
4244       <div class="tags">
4245
4246
4247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4248
4249
4250       </div>
4251     </div>
4252     <div class="padding"></div>
4253
4254     <div class="entry">
4255       <div class="title">
4256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
4257       </div>
4258       <div class="date">
4259          4th June 2013
4260       </div>
4261       <div class="body">
4262         <p>It has been a while since my last English
4263 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4264 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
4265 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
4266 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
4267 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
4268
4269 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4270
4271 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
4272 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
4273 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
4274 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
4275
4276 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
4277 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
4278 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
4279
4280 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4281 project?</strong></p>
4282
4283 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
4284 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
4285 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
4286 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
4287 manual.
4288
4289 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
4290 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
4291 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
4292 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
4293
4294 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
4295 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
4296 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
4297 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
4298 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
4299 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
4300 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
4301 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
4302 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
4303 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
4304
4305 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
4306 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
4307 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
4308 beautiful project.</p>
4309
4310 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4311 Edu?</strong></p>
4312
4313 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
4314 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
4315 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
4316
4317 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
4318 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
4319 of educational free software.</p>
4320
4321 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4322 Edu?</strong></p>
4323
4324 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
4325 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
4326 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
4327 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
4328 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
4329
4330 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
4331 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
4332 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
4333 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
4334 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
4335 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
4336 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
4337 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
4338
4339 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4340
4341 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
4342 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
4343 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
4344 also using the mathematical software
4345 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
4346 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
4347 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
4348
4349 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
4350 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
4351 statistics?</strong></p>
4352
4353 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
4354 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
4355 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
4356 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
4357
4358 <ul>
4359
4360 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
4361 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
4362 constructions in planar geometry
4363
4364 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
4365 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
4366 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
4367
4368 </ul>
4369
4370 <p>I like also
4371 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
4372 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
4373 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
4374
4375 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4376 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4377
4378 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
4379
4380 <ul>
4381
4382 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
4383
4384 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
4385     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
4386     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
4387
4388 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
4389
4390 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
4391     system.</li>
4392
4393 </ul>
4394
4395       </div>
4396       <div class="tags">
4397
4398
4399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4400
4401
4402       </div>
4403     </div>
4404     <div class="padding"></div>
4405
4406     <div class="entry">
4407       <div class="title">
4408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
4409       </div>
4410       <div class="date">
4411          1st June 2013
4412       </div>
4413       <div class="body">
4414         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4415 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
4416 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
4417 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
4418 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
4419 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
4420 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
4421 program.</p>
4422
4423 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
4424
4425 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
4426 <p>
4427 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
4428 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4429 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
4430 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
4431 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4432 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
4433 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
4434 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
4435 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
4436 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
4437 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
4438 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
4439 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
4440 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
4441 </p>
4442
4443 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
4444 <p>
4445 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
4446 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
4447 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
4448 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
4449 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
4450 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
4451 </p>
4452
4453 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
4454 <p>
4455 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
4456 </p>
4457
4458 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
4459 <p>
4460 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
4461 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
4462 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
4463 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
4464 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
4465 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
4466 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
4467 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
4468 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
4469 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
4470 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
4471 </p>
4472
4473 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
4474 <p>
4475 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4476 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
4477 </p>
4478
4479 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
4480 <p>
4481 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
4482 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
4483 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
4484 </p>
4485
4486 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
4487 <p>
4488 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4489 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
4490 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
4491 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
4492 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
4493 </p>
4494
4495 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
4496 <p>
4497 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4498 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
4499 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4500 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
4501 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
4502 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
4503 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
4504 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
4505 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
4506 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
4507 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
4508 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
4509 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
4510 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
4511 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
4512 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
4513 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
4514 </p>
4515
4516 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
4517 <p>
4518 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4519 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
4520 </p>
4521
4522 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
4523 <p>
4524 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
4525 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
4526 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
4527 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
4528 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
4529 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
4530 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
4531 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
4532 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
4533 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
4534 </p>
4535
4536 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
4537 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
4538 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
4539 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
4540 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
4541 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
4542 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
4543
4544       </div>
4545       <div class="tags">
4546
4547
4548         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4549
4550
4551       </div>
4552     </div>
4553     <div class="padding"></div>
4554
4555     <div class="entry">
4556       <div class="title">
4557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
4558       </div>
4559       <div class="date">
4560         27th May 2013
4561       </div>
4562       <div class="body">
4563         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4564 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
4565 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4566 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4567 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4568 and Windows 8.</p>
4569
4570 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4571 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4572 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4573 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4574 enough to tell.</p>
4575
4576 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4577 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4578 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4579 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4580 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4581 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4582 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4583 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4584 to follow.</p>
4585
4586 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4587 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4588 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4589 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4590 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4591 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4592 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4593 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4594
4595 <p>I've updated the
4596 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4597 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4598 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4599 machine.</p>
4600
4601 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4602 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4603
4604       </div>
4605       <div class="tags">
4606
4607
4608         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4609
4610
4611       </div>
4612     </div>
4613     <div class="padding"></div>
4614
4615     <div class="entry">
4616       <div class="title">
4617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
4618       </div>
4619       <div class="date">
4620         25th May 2013
4621       </div>
4622       <div class="body">
4623         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4624 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4625 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4626 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4627 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4628 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4629
4630 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4631 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4632 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4633 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4634 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4635 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4636 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4637 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4638 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4639 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4640
4641 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4642 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4643 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4644 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4645 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4646 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4647
4648 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4649 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4650 on new Laptops?</p>
4651
4652       </div>
4653       <div class="tags">
4654
4655
4656         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4657
4658
4659       </div>
4660     </div>
4661     <div class="padding"></div>
4662
4663     <div class="entry">
4664       <div class="title">
4665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
4666       </div>
4667       <div class="date">
4668         17th May 2013
4669       </div>
4670       <div class="body">
4671         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4672 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4673 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4674 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4675 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4676 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4677 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4678 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4679 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4680 donate some money</a>.
4681
4682 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4683 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4684 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4685 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4686 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4687
4688 <p>The script,
4689 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
4690 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4691 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4692 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4693
4694 <ol>
4695
4696 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4697 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4698 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4699     our configuration.</li>
4700 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4701     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4702     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4703     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4704 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4705     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4706 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4707
4708 </ol>
4709
4710 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4711 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4712 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4713 the needed packages.</p>
4714
4715 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4716 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4717 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4718 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4719 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4720 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4721
4722 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4723 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4724 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4725
4726 <p><pre>
4727 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4728 DESKTOP="lxde"
4729 </pre></p>
4730
4731 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4732 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4733 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4734 boot.</p>
4735
4736       </div>
4737       <div class="tags">
4738
4739
4740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4741
4742
4743       </div>
4744     </div>
4745     <div class="padding"></div>
4746
4747     <div class="entry">
4748       <div class="title">
4749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4750       </div>
4751       <div class="date">
4752         14th May 2013
4753       </div>
4754       <div class="body">
4755         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4756 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
4757 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4758
4759 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
4760 2013-05-14</strong></p>
4761
4762 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4763 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
4764 codename "Wheezy".</p>
4765
4766 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4767
4768 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4769 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4770 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
4771 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4772 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4773 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4774 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
4775 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
4776
4777 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4778 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4779 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4780
4781 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4782 <ul>
4783   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
4784     default.</li>
4785   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
4786   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
4787   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
4788     ibus-anthy.</li>
4789 </ul>
4790
4791 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4792 <ul>
4793
4794   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
4795     reliability improvements.</li>
4796   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
4797     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
4798   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
4799     problems.</li>
4800   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
4801     direct:// URL.</li>
4802   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
4803   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
4804   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
4805   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
4806     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
4807   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
4808     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
4809 </ul>
4810
4811 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4812 <ul>
4813
4814   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
4815     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
4816     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
4817   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
4818   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4819     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
4820   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
4821   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
4822   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
4823     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
4824   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
4825     password submission problem
4826     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
4827
4828 </ul>
4829
4830 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4831
4832 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4833 <ul>
4834
4835   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
4836   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
4837   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
4838
4839 </ul>
4840
4841 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
4842
4843 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
4844
4845 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4846
4847 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4848
4849       </div>
4850       <div class="tags">
4851
4852
4853         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4854
4855
4856       </div>
4857     </div>
4858     <div class="padding"></div>
4859
4860     <div class="entry">
4861       <div class="title">
4862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
4863       </div>
4864       <div class="date">
4865         11th May 2013
4866       </div>
4867       <div class="body">
4868         <P>In January,
4869 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4870 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4871 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4872 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4873 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4874 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4875 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4876 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4877 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4878 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4879 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4880 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4881
4882 <p><table>
4883 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
4884 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4885 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
4886 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4887 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4888 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4889 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
4890 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
4891 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
4892 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4893 </table></p>
4894
4895 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4896 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4897 available in experimental.</p>
4898
4899 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4900 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4901 for LEGO designers.</p>
4902
4903       </div>
4904       <div class="tags">
4905
4906
4907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4908
4909
4910       </div>
4911     </div>
4912     <div class="padding"></div>
4913
4914     <div class="entry">
4915       <div class="title">
4916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
4917       </div>
4918       <div class="date">
4919          5th May 2013
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="body">
4922         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4923 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4924 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4925 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4926 soon.</p>
4927
4928 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4929 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4930 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4931 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4932 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4933 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4934 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4935 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4936 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4937 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4938 Edu.</a>
4939
4940 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4941 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4942 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4943 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4944 follow.<p>
4945
4946       </div>
4947       <div class="tags">
4948
4949
4950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4951
4952
4953       </div>
4954     </div>
4955     <div class="padding"></div>
4956
4957     <div class="entry">
4958       <div class="title">
4959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4960       </div>
4961       <div class="date">
4962         26th April 2013
4963       </div>
4964       <div class="body">
4965         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
4966 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
4967 announcement:</p>
4968
4969 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
4970 2013-04-26</strong></p>
4971
4972 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
4973 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4974
4975 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4976
4977 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4978 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4979 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4980 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
4981 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4982 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4983 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4984 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4985 installed via the network.</p>
4986
4987 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4988 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4989 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4990
4991 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4992
4993 <ul>
4994 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
4995   <ul>
4996      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
4997      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
4998          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
4999          manual.)</li>
5000      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
5001      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
5002      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
5003      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
5004      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
5005      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
5006      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
5007      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
5008      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
5009      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
5010      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
5011      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
5012          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
5013          manual</a> for more details.</li>
5014      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
5015          installation.</li>
5016      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
5017          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
5018   </ul></li>
5019 </ul>
5020
5021 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
5022 <ul>
5023 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
5024     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
5025     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
5026 </ul>
5027
5028 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
5029 <ul>
5030 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
5031     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
5032     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
5033 </ul>
5034
5035 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5036 <ul>
5037 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
5038     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
5039     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
5040 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
5041     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
5042     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
5043 </ul>
5044
5045 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
5046 <ul>
5047 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
5048     yet.</li>
5049 </ul>
5050
5051 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
5052
5053 <ul>
5054 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
5055     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
5056     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
5057 </ul>
5058
5059 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5060
5061 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
5062 <ul>
5063 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
5064 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
5065 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
5066 </ul>
5067
5068 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
5069
5070 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
5071
5072 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5073
5074 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5075
5076       </div>
5077       <div class="tags">
5078
5079
5080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5081
5082
5083       </div>
5084     </div>
5085     <div class="padding"></div>
5086
5087     <div class="entry">
5088       <div class="title">
5089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
5090       </div>
5091       <div class="date">
5092         16th April 2013
5093       </div>
5094       <div class="body">
5095         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
5096 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
5097 Details about the gathering can be found
5098 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
5099 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
5100 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
5101 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
5102 weekend.</p>
5103
5104 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
5105 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
5106 Edu release.</p>
5107
5108 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
5109
5110       </div>
5111       <div class="tags">
5112
5113
5114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5115
5116
5117       </div>
5118     </div>
5119     <div class="padding"></div>
5120
5121     <div class="entry">
5122       <div class="title">
5123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
5124       </div>
5125       <div class="date">
5126          3rd April 2013
5127       </div>
5128       <div class="body">
5129         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
5130 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
5131 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
5132 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
5133
5134 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
5135 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
5136 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
5137 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
5138 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
5139 BTS. :)</p>
5140
5141       </div>
5142       <div class="tags">
5143
5144
5145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5146
5147
5148       </div>
5149     </div>
5150     <div class="padding"></div>
5151
5152     <div class="entry">
5153       <div class="title">
5154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
5155       </div>
5156       <div class="date">
5157         26th March 2013
5158       </div>
5159       <div class="body">
5160         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
5161 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
5162 font you use when printing.</p>
5163
5164 <p>Three years ago,
5165 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
5166 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
5167 changed their default front from
5168 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
5169 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
5170 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
5171 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
5172 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
5173 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
5174 prints.</p>
5175
5176 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
5177 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
5178 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
5179 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
5180 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
5181 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
5182 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
5183 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
5184 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
5185 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
5186 depend on the documents printed.</p>
5187
5188 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
5189 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
5190 and save some money in the process.</p>
5191
5192 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
5193 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
5194 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
5195 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
5196 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
5197 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
5198 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
5199 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
5200 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
5201
5202       </div>
5203       <div class="tags">
5204
5205
5206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5207
5208
5209       </div>
5210     </div>
5211     <div class="padding"></div>
5212
5213     <div class="entry">
5214       <div class="title">
5215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
5216       </div>
5217       <div class="date">
5218         24th March 2013
5219       </div>
5220       <div class="body">
5221         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
5222 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
5223 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
5224 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
5225 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
5226 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
5227 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
5228 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
5229 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
5230 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
5231 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
5232 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
5233
5234 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
5235 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
5236 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
5237 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
5238 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
5239 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
5240 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
5241 all I had to do was to use the
5242 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
5243 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
5244 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
5245 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
5246 xsltproc/fop (aka
5247 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
5248 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
5249 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
5250 technical detail.</p>
5251
5252 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
5253 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
5254 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
5255 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
5256 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
5257 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
5258
5259 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
5260 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
5261 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
5262 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
5263 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
5264 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
5265 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
5266 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
5267 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
5268
5269 <p><blockquote><pre>
5270 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5271 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5272   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
5273     &lt;hr/&gt;
5274   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5275 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5276 </pre></blockquote></p>
5277
5278 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
5279
5280 <p><blockquote><pre>
5281 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5282 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5283   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
5284     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
5285       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
5286     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
5287   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5288 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5289 </pre></blockquote></p>
5290
5291 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
5292 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
5293 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
5294 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
5295 enough.</p>
5296
5297 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
5298 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
5299 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
5300 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
5301 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
5302 look like this:</p>
5303
5304 <p><blockquote><pre>
5305 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5306 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5307   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
5308     &lt;br/&gt;
5309   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5310 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5311 </pre></blockquote></p>
5312
5313 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
5314
5315 <p><blockquote><pre>
5316 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5317 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
5318   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
5319   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
5320     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
5321   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5322 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5323 </pre></blockquote></p>
5324
5325 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
5326 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
5327 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
5328 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
5329 page.</p>
5330
5331 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
5332 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
5333 github</a>
5334 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
5335 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
5336 days.</p>
5337
5338       </div>
5339       <div class="tags">
5340
5341
5342         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5343
5344
5345       </div>
5346     </div>
5347     <div class="padding"></div>
5348
5349     <div class="entry">
5350       <div class="title">
5351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
5352       </div>
5353       <div class="date">
5354         17th March 2013
5355       </div>
5356       <div class="body">
5357         <p>Via
5358 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
5359 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
5360 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
5361 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5362 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
5363 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
5364 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
5365
5366 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
5367 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
5368
5369 <blockquote>
5370 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
5371 </blockquote>
5372
5373 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
5374
5375 <blockquote>
5376 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
5377 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
5378 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
5379 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
5380 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
5381 </blockquote>
5382
5383 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
5384 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
5385 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
5386 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
5387
5388 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
5389 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
5390
5391 <blockquote>
5392 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
5393 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
5394 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
5395 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
5396 </blockquote>
5397
5398 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
5399 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
5400 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
5401 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
5402 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
5403
5404 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
5405 embedding:</p>
5406
5407 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5408
5409       </div>
5410       <div class="tags">
5411
5412
5413         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5414
5415
5416       </div>
5417     </div>
5418     <div class="padding"></div>
5419
5420     <div class="entry">
5421       <div class="title">
5422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
5423       </div>
5424       <div class="date">
5425          8th March 2013
5426       </div>
5427       <div class="body">
5428         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
5429 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5430 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
5431 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5432 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
5433 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
5434 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
5435
5436 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
5437
5438 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
5439 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
5440
5441 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
5442 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
5443 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
5444 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
5445 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
5446 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
5447
5448 <p>Images are available for download at
5449 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
5450
5451 <p>md5sums:
5452 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5453 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5454 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5455
5456 <p>sha1sums:
5457 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5458 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5459 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5460
5461 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
5462
5463 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
5464 2013-03-03:</p>
5465
5466 <ul>
5467   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
5468   <ul>
5469         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
5470         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
5471   </ul></li>
5472   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
5473   <ul>
5474         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
5475         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
5476   </ul></li>
5477   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
5478      <ul>
5479         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
5480         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
5481         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
5482                 Closes: #664596</li>
5483         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
5484                 Closes: #664976</li>
5485         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
5486            <ul>
5487                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
5488                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
5489            </ul></li>
5490         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
5491            <ul>
5492                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
5493                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
5494                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
5495                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
5496                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
5497            </ul></li>
5498         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
5499     </ul>
5500   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
5501     <ul>
5502         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
5503     </ul></li>
5504 </ul>
5505
5506 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
5507 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
5508 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
5509 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
5510
5511 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
5512 mailinglist
5513 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
5514 </p></blockquote>
5515
5516 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
5517
5518       </div>
5519       <div class="tags">
5520
5521
5522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5523
5524
5525       </div>
5526     </div>
5527     <div class="padding"></div>
5528
5529     <div class="entry">
5530       <div class="title">
5531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
5532       </div>
5533       <div class="date">
5534          3rd March 2013
5535       </div>
5536       <div class="body">
5537         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
5538 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
5539 support using
5540 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
5541 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
5542 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
5543 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
5544 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
5545 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
5546 using the GNU LGPL, and
5547 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
5548
5549 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
5550 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
5551 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
5552 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
5553 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
5554 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
5555
5556 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
5557 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
5558 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
5559 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
5560 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
5561 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
5562 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
5563 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
5564 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
5565 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
5566 signal distribution is handled using
5567 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
5568 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
5569 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
5570 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
5571 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
5572 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
5573 them up a bit more first.</p>
5574
5575 <p>The development is coordinated on the
5576 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
5577 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
5578 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
5579 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
5580 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
5581 development.</p>
5582
5583       </div>
5584       <div class="tags">
5585
5586
5587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5588
5589
5590       </div>
5591     </div>
5592     <div class="padding"></div>
5593
5594     <div class="entry">
5595       <div class="title">
5596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
5597       </div>
5598       <div class="date">
5599         27th February 2013
5600       </div>
5601       <div class="body">
5602         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
5603 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
5604 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
5605 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
5606 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
5607 (where I am the chair of the board) and
5608 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
5609 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
5610 GNU», with this description:
5611
5612 <p><blockquote>
5613 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
5614 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
5615 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
5616 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
5617 </blockquote></p>
5618
5619 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
5620 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
5621 am really curious how many will show up.  See
5622 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
5623 page</a> for the location details.</p>
5624
5625       </div>
5626       <div class="tags">
5627
5628
5629         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5630
5631
5632       </div>
5633     </div>
5634     <div class="padding"></div>
5635
5636     <div class="entry">
5637       <div class="title">
5638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="date">
5641         15th February 2013
5642       </div>
5643       <div class="body">
5644         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
5645 now a great source of free maps available from
5646 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
5647 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
5648 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
5649 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
5650 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
5651 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
5652 page for descriptions).</p>
5653
5654 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
5655 map you can just edit the
5656 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
5657 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
5658
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="tags">
5661
5662
5663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
5664
5665
5666       </div>
5667     </div>
5668     <div class="padding"></div>
5669
5670     <div class="entry">
5671       <div class="title">
5672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="date">
5675         12th February 2013
5676       </div>
5677       <div class="body">
5678         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
5679 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
5680 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
5681 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
5682 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
5683 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
5684 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
5685 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
5686 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
5687 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
5688 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
5689 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
5690 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
5691 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
5692 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
5693 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
5694
5695 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
5696 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
5697 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
5698 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
5699 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
5700 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
5701 fields:</p>
5702
5703 <p><pre>
5704 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5705 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5706 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
5707 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5708 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5709 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5710 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5711 </pre></p>
5712
5713 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
5714 answer regarding
5715 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
5716 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
5717 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
5718 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
5719
5720 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
5721
5722 <p><pre>
5723 BEGIN:VCARD
5724 VERSION:2.1
5725 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
5726 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
5727 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
5728 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
5729 REV:20130212T095000Z
5730 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
5731 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
5732 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
5733 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
5734 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
5735 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
5736 END:VCARD
5737 </pre></p>
5738
5739 <p>The resulting QR code created using
5740 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
5741 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
5742 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
5743 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
5744 system.</p>
5745
5746 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
5747
5748 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
5749 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
5750 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
5751 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
5752
5753 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
5754 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
5755
5756       </div>
5757       <div class="tags">
5758
5759
5760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5761
5762
5763       </div>
5764     </div>
5765     <div class="padding"></div>
5766
5767     <div class="entry">
5768       <div class="title">
5769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
5770       </div>
5771       <div class="date">
5772         10th February 2013
5773       </div>
5774       <div class="body">
5775         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
5776
5777 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
5778 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
5779 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
5780 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
5781 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
5782 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
5783 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
5784 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
5785 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
5786 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
5787 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
5788
5789 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
5790 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
5791 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
5792 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
5793 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
5794 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
5795 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
5796 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
5797 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
5798 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
5799 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
5800 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
5801 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
5802 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
5803 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
5804 ones own
5805 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
5806 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
5807 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
5808 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
5809 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
5810 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
5811 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
5812 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
5813 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
5814 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
5815 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
5816
5817 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
5818 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
5819 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
5820 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
5821 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
5822 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
5823
5824 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
5825 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
5826 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
5827
5828       </div>
5829       <div class="tags">
5830
5831
5832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5833
5834
5835       </div>
5836     </div>
5837     <div class="padding"></div>
5838
5839     <div class="entry">
5840       <div class="title">
5841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
5842       </div>
5843       <div class="date">
5844          2nd February 2013
5845       </div>
5846       <div class="body">
5847         <p>My
5848 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
5849 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
5850 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
5851 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
5852 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
5853 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
5854 version too.</p>
5855
5856 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
5857 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
5858 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
5859 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
5860 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
5861 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
5862 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
5863 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
5864
5865 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
5866 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
5867 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
5868 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
5869 it. :)</p>
5870
5871 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5872 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5873 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5874
5875       </div>
5876       <div class="tags">
5877
5878
5879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5880
5881
5882       </div>
5883     </div>
5884     <div class="padding"></div>
5885
5886     <div class="entry">
5887       <div class="title">
5888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
5889       </div>
5890       <div class="date">
5891         22nd January 2013
5892       </div>
5893       <div class="body">
5894         <p>Yesterday, I
5895 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
5896 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
5897 pluggable hardware devices, which I
5898 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
5899 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
5900 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
5901 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
5902 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
5903 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
5904 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
5905 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
5906 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
5907 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
5908
5909 <pre>
5910 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
5911 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
5912 </pre>
5913
5914 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
5915 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
5916 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
5917 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
5918
5919 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
5920 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
5921 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
5922 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
5923 word.</p>
5924
5925 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
5926 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
5927 process.</p>
5928
5929 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
5930 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
5931
5932       </div>
5933       <div class="tags">
5934
5935
5936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5937
5938
5939       </div>
5940     </div>
5941     <div class="padding"></div>
5942
5943     <div class="entry">
5944       <div class="title">
5945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
5946       </div>
5947       <div class="date">
5948         21st January 2013
5949       </div>
5950       <div class="body">
5951         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
5952 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
5953 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
5954 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
5955 it, fetch the
5956 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
5957 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
5958 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
5959 autostart script.</p>
5960
5961 <p>The design is simple:</p>
5962
5963 <ul>
5964
5965 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
5966 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
5967
5968 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
5969 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
5970 initially did.</li>
5971
5972 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
5973 the APT database, a database
5974 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
5975 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
5976
5977 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
5978 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
5979 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
5980 package or packages.</li>
5981
5982 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
5983 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
5984
5985 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
5986 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
5987
5988 </ul>
5989
5990 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
5991 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
5992 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
5993 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
5994
5995 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
5996 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
5997 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
5998 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
5999 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
6000
6001 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6002 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
6003 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6004 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6005 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6006 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6007 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6008 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
6009
6010 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6011 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6012 '<tt>svn checkout
6013 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6014 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
6015 devscripts package.</p>
6016
6017 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
6018 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
6019 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
6020 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
6021 instructions</a> for details.</p>
6022
6023       </div>
6024       <div class="tags">
6025
6026
6027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6028
6029
6030       </div>
6031     </div>
6032     <div class="padding"></div>
6033
6034     <div class="entry">
6035       <div class="title">
6036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
6037       </div>
6038       <div class="date">
6039         19th January 2013
6040       </div>
6041       <div class="body">
6042         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
6043 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
6044 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
6045 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
6046 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
6047 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
6048 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
6049 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
6050 not a durable solution.
6051
6052 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
6053 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
6054
6055 <ul>
6056
6057 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
6058   than A4).</li>
6059 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
6060 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
6061 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
6062 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
6063 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
6064 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
6065 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
6066 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
6067 size).</li>
6068 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
6069   X.org packages.</li>
6070 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
6071   the time).
6072
6073 </ul>
6074
6075 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
6076 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
6077 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
6078 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
6079 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
6080 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
6081 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
6082 still be useful.</p>
6083
6084 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
6085 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
6086 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
6087 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
6088 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
6089 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
6090
6091       </div>
6092       <div class="tags">
6093
6094
6095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6096
6097
6098       </div>
6099     </div>
6100     <div class="padding"></div>
6101
6102     <div class="entry">
6103       <div class="title">
6104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
6105       </div>
6106       <div class="date">
6107         18th January 2013
6108       </div>
6109       <div class="body">
6110         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
6111 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
6112 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
6113 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
6114 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
6115 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
6116 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
6117
6118 <pre>
6119 #!/usr/bin/python
6120 import sys
6121 import apt
6122 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6123     cache = apt.Cache()
6124     cache.open(None)
6125     thepkgs = []
6126     for pkg in cache:
6127         version = pkg.candidate
6128         if version is None:
6129             version = pkg.installed
6130         if version is None:
6131             continue
6132         record = version.record
6133         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
6134             continue
6135         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
6136         for t in mime_types:
6137             t = t.rstrip().strip()
6138             if t == mimetype:
6139                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
6140     return thepkgs
6141 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
6142 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
6143     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
6144 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
6145 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6146     print "  %s" %pkg
6147 </pre>
6148
6149 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
6150
6151 <pre>
6152 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
6153 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
6154   gecko-mediaplayer
6155 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
6156 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
6157   browser-plugin-gnash
6158 %
6159 </pre>
6160
6161 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
6162 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
6163 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
6164 anyone working on adding it?</p>
6165
6166 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
6167 request for icweasel support for this feature is
6168 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
6169 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
6170 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
6171 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
6172
6173       </div>
6174       <div class="tags">
6175
6176
6177         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6178
6179
6180       </div>
6181     </div>
6182     <div class="padding"></div>
6183
6184     <div class="entry">
6185       <div class="title">
6186         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
6187       </div>
6188       <div class="date">
6189         16th January 2013
6190       </div>
6191       <div class="body">
6192         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
6193 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
6194 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
6195 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
6196 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
6197 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
6198 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
6199 downloaded by the browser.</p>
6200
6201 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
6202 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
6203 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
6204 can be found on the
6205 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
6206 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
6207 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
6208 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
6209 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
6210
6211 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
6212
6213 <pre>
6214   count MIME type
6215   ----- -----------------------
6216      32 text/plain
6217      30 audio/mpeg
6218      29 image/png
6219      28 image/jpeg
6220      27 application/ogg
6221      26 audio/x-mp3
6222      25 image/tiff
6223      25 image/gif
6224      22 image/bmp
6225      22 audio/x-wav
6226      20 audio/x-flac
6227      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6228      18 video/x-ms-asf
6229      18 audio/x-musepack
6230      18 audio/x-mpeg
6231      18 application/x-ogg
6232      17 video/mpeg
6233      17 audio/x-scpls
6234      17 audio/ogg
6235      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6236 </pre>
6237
6238 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
6239
6240 <pre>
6241   count MIME type
6242   ----- -----------------------
6243      33 text/plain
6244      32 image/png
6245      32 image/jpeg
6246      29 audio/mpeg
6247      27 image/gif
6248      26 image/tiff
6249      26 application/ogg
6250      25 audio/x-mp3
6251      22 image/bmp
6252      21 audio/x-wav
6253      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6254      19 audio/x-mpeg
6255      18 video/mpeg
6256      18 audio/x-scpls
6257      18 audio/x-flac
6258      18 application/x-ogg
6259      17 video/x-ms-asf
6260      17 text/html
6261      17 audio/x-musepack
6262      16 image/x-xbitmap
6263 </pre>
6264
6265 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
6266
6267 <pre>
6268   count MIME type
6269   ----- -----------------------
6270      31 text/plain
6271      31 image/png
6272      31 image/jpeg
6273      29 audio/mpeg
6274      28 application/ogg
6275      27 image/gif
6276      26 image/tiff
6277      26 audio/x-mp3
6278      23 audio/x-wav
6279      22 image/bmp
6280      21 audio/x-flac
6281      20 audio/x-mpegurl
6282      19 audio/x-mpeg
6283      18 video/x-ms-asf
6284      18 video/mpeg
6285      18 audio/x-scpls
6286      18 application/x-ogg
6287      17 audio/x-musepack
6288      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6289      16 video/x-msvideo
6290 </pre>
6291
6292 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
6293 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
6294 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
6295 issues.</p>
6296
6297 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
6298 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
6299
6300       </div>
6301       <div class="tags">
6302
6303
6304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6305
6306
6307       </div>
6308     </div>
6309     <div class="padding"></div>
6310
6311     <div class="entry">
6312       <div class="title">
6313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
6314       </div>
6315       <div class="date">
6316         15th January 2013
6317       </div>
6318       <div class="body">
6319         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
6320 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
6321 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
6322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
6323 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
6324 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
6325 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
6326 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
6327 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
6328 packages.</p>
6329
6330 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
6331 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
6332 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
6333 modalias.</p>
6334
6335 <p><blockquote>
6336 Package: package-name
6337 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
6338 </blockquote></p>
6339
6340 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
6341 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
6342
6343 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
6344 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
6345
6346 <p><blockquote>
6347 Package: cheese
6348 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
6349 </blockquote></p>
6350
6351 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
6352 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
6353
6354 <p><blockquote>
6355 Package: pcmciautils
6356 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
6357 </blockquote></p>
6358
6359 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
6360 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
6361
6362 <p><blockquote>
6363 Package: colorhug-client
6364 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
6365 </blockquote></p>
6366
6367 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
6368 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
6369 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
6370
6371 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
6372 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
6373 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
6374 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
6375 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
6376 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
6377 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
6378 Raring.</p>
6379
6380 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
6381 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
6382 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
6383 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
6384 try the
6385 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
6386 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
6387 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
6388 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
6389
6390 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
6391 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
6392
6393 <p><blockquote>
6394 % ./hw-support-lookup
6395 <br>yubikey-personalization
6396 <br>%
6397 </blockquote></p>
6398
6399 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
6400 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
6401
6402 <p><blockquote>
6403 % ./hw-support-lookup
6404 <br>pcmciautils
6405 <br>%
6406 </blockquote></p>
6407
6408 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
6409 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
6410 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
6411
6412 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
6413 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
6414 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
6415 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6416 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6417 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6418 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6419 see if it work.</p>
6420
6421 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6422 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6423 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6424 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6425
6426       </div>
6427       <div class="tags">
6428
6429
6430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6431
6432
6433       </div>
6434     </div>
6435     <div class="padding"></div>
6436
6437     <div class="entry">
6438       <div class="title">
6439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
6440       </div>
6441       <div class="date">
6442         14th January 2013
6443       </div>
6444       <div class="body">
6445         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6446 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6447 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6448 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6449 in
6450 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6451 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6452
6453 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6454
6455 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6456 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6457 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6458 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
6459 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
6460 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
6461
6462 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6463 this shell script:</p>
6464
6465 <pre>
6466 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6467 </pre>
6468
6469 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6470 using modinfo:</p>
6471
6472 <pre>
6473 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6474 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6475 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6476 %
6477 </pre>
6478
6479 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6480
6481 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6482 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6483
6484 <p><blockquote>
6485 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6486 </blockquote></p>
6487
6488 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6489
6490 <pre>
6491  v   00008086  (vendor)
6492  d   00002770  (device)
6493  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6494  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6495  bc  06        (bus class)
6496  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6497  i   00        (interface)
6498 </pre>
6499
6500 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6501 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6502 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6503 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6504
6505 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6506 means.</p>
6507
6508 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6509
6510 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6511 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6512
6513 <p><blockquote>
6514 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6515 </blockquote></p>
6516
6517 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6518
6519 <pre>
6520  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6521  p    0001  (device product)
6522  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6523  dc     09  (device class)
6524  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6525  dp     00  (device protocol)
6526  ic     09  (interface class)
6527  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6528  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6529 </pre>
6530
6531 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6532 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6533 these alias entries show up:</p>
6534
6535 <p><blockquote>
6536 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6537 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6538 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6539 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6540 </blockquote></p>
6541
6542 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6543 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6544 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6545
6546 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6547
6548 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6549 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6550
6551 <p><blockquote>
6552 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6553 </blockquote></p>
6554
6555 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6556
6557 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6558
6559 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6560 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6561 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6562
6563 <p><blockquote>
6564 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6565 </blockquote></p>
6566
6567 <p>The values present are</p>
6568
6569 <pre>
6570  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6571  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6572  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6573  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6574  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6575  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6576  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6577  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6578  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6579  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6580  ct   10             (chassis type)
6581  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6582 </pre>
6583
6584 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6585 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6586
6587 <pre>
6588   3 Desktop
6589   4 Low Profile Desktop
6590   5 Pizza Box
6591   6 Mini Tower
6592   7 Tower
6593   8 Portable
6594   9 Laptop
6595  10 Notebook
6596  11 Hand Held
6597  12 Docking Station
6598  13 All In One
6599  14 Sub Notebook
6600  15 Space-saving
6601  16 Lunch Box
6602  17 Main Server Chassis
6603  18 Expansion Chassis
6604  19 Sub Chassis
6605  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6606  21 Peripheral Chassis
6607  22 RAID Chassis
6608  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6609  24 Sealed-case PC
6610  25 Multi-system
6611  26 CompactPCI
6612  27 AdvancedTCA
6613  28 Blade
6614  29 Blade Enclosing
6615 </pre>
6616
6617 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
6618 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
6619 claim it is a desktop.</p>
6620
6621 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
6622
6623 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
6624 test machine:</p>
6625
6626 <p><blockquote>
6627 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
6628 </blockquote></p>
6629
6630 <p>The values present are</p>
6631
6632 <pre>
6633   ty  01  (type)
6634   pr  00  (prototype)
6635   id  00  (id)
6636   ex  00  (extra)
6637 </pre>
6638
6639 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
6640 the valid values are.</p>
6641
6642 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
6643
6644 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
6645 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
6646 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
6647 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
6648 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
6649 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
6650 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
6651
6652 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
6653
6654 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
6655 one can use the following shell script:</p>
6656
6657 <pre>
6658   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
6659     echo "$id" ; \
6660     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
6661   done
6662 </pre>
6663
6664 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
6665 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
6666
6667 <pre>
6668   acpi:ACPI0003:
6669     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
6670   acpi:device:
6671   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
6672   acpi:IBM0068:
6673     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
6674     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
6675     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
6676     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
6677   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6678     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
6679     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
6680     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
6681   [...]
6682 </pre>
6683
6684 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6685 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6686 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6687 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6688
6689 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
6690 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
6691 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
6692
6693       </div>
6694       <div class="tags">
6695
6696
6697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6698
6699
6700       </div>
6701     </div>
6702     <div class="padding"></div>
6703
6704     <div class="entry">
6705       <div class="title">
6706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
6707       </div>
6708       <div class="date">
6709         10th January 2013
6710       </div>
6711       <div class="body">
6712         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
6713 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
6714 Launcher and updated the Debian package
6715 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
6716 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
6717 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
6718 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
6719 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
6720 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
6721 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
6722 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
6723 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
6724 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
6725 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
6726 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
6727 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
6728 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
6729 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
6730
6731       </div>
6732       <div class="tags">
6733
6734
6735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6736
6737
6738       </div>
6739     </div>
6740     <div class="padding"></div>
6741
6742     <div class="entry">
6743       <div class="title">
6744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
6745       </div>
6746       <div class="date">
6747          9th January 2013
6748       </div>
6749       <div class="body">
6750         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
6751 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
6752 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
6753 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
6754 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
6755 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
6756 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
6757 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
6758 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
6759 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
6760 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
6761
6762 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
6763 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
6764 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
6765 simple:
6766
6767 <ul>
6768
6769 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
6770   starting when a user log in.</li>
6771
6772 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
6773   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
6774
6775 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
6776   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
6777   packages.</li>
6778
6779 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
6780   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
6781
6782 </ul>
6783
6784 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
6785 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
6786 discover database to find packages and
6787 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
6788 packages.</p>
6789
6790 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
6791 draft package is now checked into
6792 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6793 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
6794 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
6795 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
6796 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
6797 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
6798 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
6799 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
6800 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
6801 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
6802 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
6803 because of the freeze).</p>
6804
6805 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
6806 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
6807 inserted):</p>
6808
6809 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
6810
6811 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
6812 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
6813 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
6814
6815 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
6816 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
6817 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
6818 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
6819 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
6820 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
6821 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
6822
6823 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
6824 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
6825 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
6826 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
6827 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
6828 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
6829 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
6830 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
6831 not be installed?</p>
6832
6833 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
6834 please send me an email. :)</p>
6835
6836       </div>
6837       <div class="tags">
6838
6839
6840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6841
6842
6843       </div>
6844     </div>
6845     <div class="padding"></div>
6846
6847     <div class="entry">
6848       <div class="title">
6849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
6850       </div>
6851       <div class="date">
6852          2nd January 2013
6853       </div>
6854       <div class="body">
6855         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
6856 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
6857 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
6858 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
6859 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
6860 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
6861 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
6862 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
6863 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
6864 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
6865
6866 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
6867 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
6868 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
6869
6870       </div>
6871       <div class="tags">
6872
6873
6874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6875
6876
6877       </div>
6878     </div>
6879     <div class="padding"></div>
6880
6881     <div class="entry">
6882       <div class="title">
6883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6884       </div>
6885       <div class="date">
6886         28th December 2012
6887       </div>
6888       <div class="body">
6889         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
6890 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6891 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
6892 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
6893 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
6894 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
6895 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
6896 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
6897 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
6898 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
6899 followed by many others. :)</p>
6900
6901 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
6902 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
6903 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
6904 you want to donate to the project.</p>
6905
6906       </div>
6907       <div class="tags">
6908
6909
6910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6911
6912
6913       </div>
6914     </div>
6915     <div class="padding"></div>
6916
6917     <div class="entry">
6918       <div class="title">
6919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
6920       </div>
6921       <div class="date">
6922         25th December 2012
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="body">
6925         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
6926 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
6927
6928 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
6929 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
6930 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
6931 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
6932 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
6933 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
6934 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
6935 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
6936 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
6937 name.</p>
6938
6939 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
6940 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
6941 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
6942
6943 <blockquote><pre>
6944 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
6945 cd bitcoin
6946 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
6947 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
6948 </pre></blockquote>
6949
6950 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
6951 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
6952 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
6953 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
6954 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
6955 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
6956 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
6957 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
6958 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
6959
6960 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6961 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6962 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6963
6964       </div>
6965       <div class="tags">
6966
6967
6968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6969
6970
6971       </div>
6972     </div>
6973     <div class="padding"></div>
6974
6975     <div class="entry">
6976       <div class="title">
6977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
6978       </div>
6979       <div class="date">
6980         21st December 2012
6981       </div>
6982       <div class="body">
6983         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
6984 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
6985 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
6986 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
6987 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
6988 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
6989 is now maintained by a
6990 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
6991 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
6992 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
6993 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
6994 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
6995 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
6996 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
6997 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
6998 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
6999 Corallo in a
7000 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7001 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7002 Debian package.</p>
7003
7004 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7005 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7006 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7007 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7008 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7009 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7010 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7011 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
7012 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7013 new version to unstable.
7014
7015 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7016 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
7017 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7018 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7019 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7020 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7021 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7022 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
7023 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7024 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7025 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
7026 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7027 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7028 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
7029 have not tested them.</p>
7030
7031 <p>My
7032 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7033 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7034 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7035 years ago, as can be
7036 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7037 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
7038 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7039 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7040 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
7041 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7042 the same address as last time,
7043 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7044
7045       </div>
7046       <div class="tags">
7047
7048
7049         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7050
7051
7052       </div>
7053     </div>
7054     <div class="padding"></div>
7055
7056     <div class="entry">
7057       <div class="title">
7058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
7059       </div>
7060       <div class="date">
7061         18th December 2012
7062       </div>
7063       <div class="body">
7064         <p>A few days ago I came across
7065 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
7066 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
7067 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
7068 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
7069 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
7070 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
7071 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
7072 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
7073 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
7074
7075 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
7076 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
7077 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
7078 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
7079
7080 <blockquote><pre>
7081 2004-05-27 Book Store
7082       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
7083       Liabilities:Visa
7084 </pre></blockquote>
7085
7086 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
7087 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
7088 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
7089 Spang</a>,
7090 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
7091 Keen</a>,
7092 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
7093 Cantino</a> and
7094 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
7095 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
7096 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
7097 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
7098 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
7099
7100 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
7101 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
7102 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
7103 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
7104 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
7105
7106 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
7107 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
7108 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
7109 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
7110 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
7111 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
7112 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
7113 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
7114 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
7115
7116       </div>
7117       <div class="tags">
7118
7119
7120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7121
7122
7123       </div>
7124     </div>
7125     <div class="padding"></div>
7126
7127     <div class="entry">
7128       <div class="title">
7129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
7130       </div>
7131       <div class="date">
7132          6th December 2012
7133       </div>
7134       <div class="body">
7135         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
7136 Oslo</a>, we use the
7137 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
7138 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
7139 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
7140 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
7141 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
7142 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
7143 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
7144 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
7145 Python.</p>
7146
7147 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
7148 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
7149 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
7150 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
7151 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
7152 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
7153
7154 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
7155 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
7156 user currently logged in:</p>
7157
7158 <blockquote><pre>
7159 #!/usr/bin/env python
7160 import getpass
7161 import xmlrpclib
7162 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
7163 username = getpass.getuser()
7164 password = getpass.getpass()
7165 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
7166 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
7167 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
7168 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
7169 result = server.logout(sessionid)
7170 print result
7171 </pre></blockquote>
7172
7173 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
7174 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192         17th November 2012
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         <p>While working on a
7196 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
7197 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
7198 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
7199 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
7200 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
7201 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
7202
7203 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
7204 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
7205 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
7206 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
7207 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
7208 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
7209 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
7210 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
7211 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
7212 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
7213 arguments.</p>
7214
7215 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
7216 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
7217 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
7218 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
7219 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
7220 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
7221 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
7222 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
7223
7224 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
7225 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
7226 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
7227 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
7228 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
7229 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
7230 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
7231 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
7232 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
7233 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
7234 correct right holder.</p>
7235
7236 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
7237 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
7238 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
7239 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
7240 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
7241 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
7242 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
7243 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
7244 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
7245 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
7246 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
7247 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
7248 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
7249 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
7250
7251 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
7252 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
7253 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
7254
7255 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
7256 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
7257
7258       </div>
7259       <div class="tags">
7260
7261
7262         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7263
7264
7265       </div>
7266     </div>
7267     <div class="padding"></div>
7268
7269     <div class="entry">
7270       <div class="title">
7271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
7272       </div>
7273       <div class="date">
7274         14th November 2012
7275       </div>
7276       <div class="body">
7277         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
7278 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7279 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
7280 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
7281 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
7282 the people behind the German
7283 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
7284 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
7285 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
7286
7287 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7288
7289 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
7290 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
7291 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
7292
7293 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
7294 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
7295 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
7296 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
7297 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
7298 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
7299
7300 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
7301 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
7302 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
7303 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
7304 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
7305 relationship management and the communication processes in the
7306 project.</p>
7307
7308 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
7309 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
7310 and a yoga teacher.</p>
7311
7312 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7313 project?</strong></p>
7314
7315 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
7316
7317 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
7318 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
7319 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
7320 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
7321 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
7322 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
7323 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
7324 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
7325 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
7326 parents.</p>
7327
7328 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
7329 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
7330 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
7331 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
7332 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
7333 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
7334 Germany.</p>
7335
7336 <p>For information about our school project you can read
7337 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
7338 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
7339
7340 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7341 Edu?</strong></p>
7342
7343 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
7344 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
7345
7346 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
7347 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
7348 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
7349 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
7350 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
7351 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
7352 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
7353 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
7354 teachers, parents...</p>
7355
7356 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7357 Edu?</strong></p>
7358
7359 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
7360 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7361
7362 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
7363 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
7364 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
7365 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
7366 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7367
7368 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
7369 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
7370 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
7371 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
7372 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
7373 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
7374 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7375
7376 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7377
7378 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
7379 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
7380 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
7381 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
7382
7383 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7384 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7385
7386 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
7387 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
7388 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
7389 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
7390 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
7391
7392 <ul>
7393
7394 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
7395 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
7396 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
7397
7398 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
7399 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
7400 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
7401 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
7402 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
7403 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
7404 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
7405
7406 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
7407 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
7408 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
7409 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
7410
7411 </ul>
7412
7413       </div>
7414       <div class="tags">
7415
7416
7417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7418
7419
7420       </div>
7421     </div>
7422     <div class="padding"></div>
7423
7424     <div class="entry">
7425       <div class="title">
7426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
7427       </div>
7428       <div class="date">
7429          4th November 2012
7430       </div>
7431       <div class="body">
7432         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
7433 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
7434 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
7435 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
7436 see how a member of the bitcoin community
7437 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
7438 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
7439 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
7440 competition.  My thoughts go to the
7441 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
7442 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
7443 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
7444 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
7445 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
7446
7447 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
7448 that the community already seem to have
7449 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
7450 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
7451 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
7452 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
7453 wealth is available.</p>
7454
7455       </div>
7456       <div class="tags">
7457
7458
7459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7460
7461
7462       </div>
7463     </div>
7464     <div class="padding"></div>
7465
7466     <div class="entry">
7467       <div class="title">
7468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
7469       </div>
7470       <div class="date">
7471         26th October 2012
7472       </div>
7473       <div class="body">
7474         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
7475 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
7476 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
7477 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
7478 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
7479 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
7480 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
7481 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
7482 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
7483 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
7484 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
7485 it every time.</p>
7486
7487 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
7488 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
7489 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
7490 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
7491 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
7492 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
7493 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
7494 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
7495 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
7496 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
7497 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
7498 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
7499
7500 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
7501 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
7502 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
7503 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
7504 article: First the unplanned outage:
7505
7506 <blockquote><pre>
7507 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
7508 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
7509 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
7510 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
7511 Duration:    40 minutes
7512 Scope:       Exchange 2003
7513 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
7514              a cluster failover.
7515
7516 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
7517              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
7518 Technician:  [xxx]
7519 </pre></blockquote>
7520
7521 Next the planned outage:
7522
7523 <blockquote><pre>
7524 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
7525 Severity:    Major (Planned)
7526 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
7527 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
7528 Duration:    10 hours
7529 Scope:       H2 Transport
7530 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
7531              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
7532              4510s.
7533 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
7534              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
7535              connectivity.
7536 Technician:  [xxx]
7537 </pre></blockquote>
7538
7539 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
7540 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
7541 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
7542 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
7543 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
7544 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
7545 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
7546
7547 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
7548 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
7549 university too.  We do register
7550 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
7551 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
7552 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
7553 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
7554 for other sites to consider too?</p>
7555
7556       </div>
7557       <div class="tags">
7558
7559
7560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7561
7562
7563       </div>
7564     </div>
7565     <div class="padding"></div>
7566
7567     <div class="entry">
7568       <div class="title">
7569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
7570       </div>
7571       <div class="date">
7572         22nd October 2012
7573       </div>
7574       <div class="body">
7575         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
7576 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
7577 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
7578 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
7579 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
7580 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
7581 background information is available in Norwegian from
7582 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
7583 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
7584 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
7585 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
7586 willing to
7587 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
7588 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
7589 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
7590 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
7591 sounded like
7592 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
7593 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
7594 later.</p>
7595
7596 <p>And thought this action is
7597 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
7598 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
7599 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
7600 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
7601 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
7602 rights.</p>
7603
7604 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
7605 unacceptable terms.  For example
7606 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
7607 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
7608 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
7609 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
7610 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
7611
7612 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
7613 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
7614 restored the account of the user, as reported by
7615 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
7616 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
7617 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
7618 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
7619 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
7620 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
7621 reading two opinions from
7622 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
7623 Phipps</a> and
7624 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
7625 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
7626 details about the original story.</p>
7627
7628       </div>
7629       <div class="tags">
7630
7631
7632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
7633
7634
7635       </div>
7636     </div>
7637     <div class="padding"></div>
7638
7639     <div class="entry">
7640       <div class="title">
7641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
7642       </div>
7643       <div class="date">
7644         18th October 2012
7645       </div>
7646       <div class="body">
7647         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
7648 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
7649 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
7650 across a marvellous drawing by
7651 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
7652 visualising some of what is going on.
7653
7654 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
7655 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
7656
7657 <blockquote>
7658 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
7659 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
7660 </blockquote>
7661
7662 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
7663 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
7664 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
7665 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
7666 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
7667 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
7668
7669       </div>
7670       <div class="tags">
7671
7672
7673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7674
7675
7676       </div>
7677     </div>
7678     <div class="padding"></div>
7679
7680     <div class="entry">
7681       <div class="title">
7682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
7683       </div>
7684       <div class="date">
7685         12th October 2012
7686       </div>
7687       <div class="body">
7688         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
7689 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
7690 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
7691 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
7692 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
7693 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
7694 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
7695 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
7696 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
7697 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
7698 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
7699 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
7700 matter".</p>
7701
7702 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
7703 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
7704 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
7705 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
7706 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
7707 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
7708 to argue its side.</p>
7709
7710 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
7711 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
7712 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
7713 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
7714
7715 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
7716 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
7717 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
7718
7719       </div>
7720       <div class="tags">
7721
7722
7723         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
7724
7725
7726       </div>
7727     </div>
7728     <div class="padding"></div>
7729
7730     <div class="entry">
7731       <div class="title">
7732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
7733       </div>
7734       <div class="date">
7735          3rd October 2012
7736       </div>
7737       <div class="body">
7738         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
7739 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
7740 the computer science book collection available in his local
7741 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
7742 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
7743 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
7744 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
7745 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
7746 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
7747 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
7748 recently published books.</p>
7749
7750 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
7751 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
7752 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
7753 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
7754 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
7755 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
7756 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
7757 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
7758 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
7759 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
7760 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
7761 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
7762 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
7763 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
7764 for the library that evening.</p>
7765
7766 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
7767 going to know that for example
7768 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
7769 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
7770 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
7771 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
7772 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
7773 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
7774 book right away.</p>
7775
7776       </div>
7777       <div class="tags">
7778
7779
7780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7781
7782
7783       </div>
7784     </div>
7785     <div class="padding"></div>
7786
7787     <div class="entry">
7788       <div class="title">
7789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
7790       </div>
7791       <div class="date">
7792         23rd September 2012
7793       </div>
7794       <div class="body">
7795         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
7796 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
7797 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7798 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
7799 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
7800 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
7801
7802 When I started, I
7803 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7804 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
7805 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
7806 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
7807 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
7808 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
7809 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
7810
7811 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7812
7813 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
7814 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
7815 the project files currently available from
7816 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7817
7818 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7819 the updated
7820 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7821 and
7822 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7823 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7824 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7825 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7826
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="tags">
7829
7830
7831         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7832
7833
7834       </div>
7835     </div>
7836     <div class="padding"></div>
7837
7838     <div class="entry">
7839       <div class="title">
7840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
7841       </div>
7842       <div class="date">
7843         17th September 2012
7844       </div>
7845       <div class="body">
7846         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
7847 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7848 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
7849 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
7850 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
7851 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
7852 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
7853
7854 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7855
7856 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
7857 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
7858 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
7859 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
7860 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
7861 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
7862 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
7863 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
7864 training is anyway very important</p>
7865
7866 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
7867 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
7868 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
7869 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
7870 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
7871
7872 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7873 project?</strong></p>
7874
7875 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
7876 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
7877 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
7878 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
7879 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
7880 hole.</p>
7881
7882 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7883 Edu?</strong></p>
7884
7885 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
7886 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
7887 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
7888 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
7889 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
7890 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
7891 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
7892 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
7893 hassle.</p>
7894
7895 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7896 Edu?</strong></p>
7897
7898 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
7899 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
7900 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
7901 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
7902 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
7903 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
7904 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
7905 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
7906
7907 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7908
7909 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
7910 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
7911 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
7912 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
7913 has the same...</p>
7914
7915 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
7916 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
7917 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
7918 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
7919
7920 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7921 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7922
7923 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
7924 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
7925 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
7926
7927 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
7928 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
7929 don't.</p>
7930
7931 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
7932 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
7933 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
7934 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
7935 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
7936 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
7937 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
7938
7939       </div>
7940       <div class="tags">
7941
7942
7943         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7944
7945
7946       </div>
7947     </div>
7948     <div class="padding"></div>
7949
7950     <div class="entry">
7951       <div class="title">
7952         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
7953       </div>
7954       <div class="date">
7955         15th September 2012
7956       </div>
7957       <div class="body">
7958         <p>After the
7959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
7960 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
7961 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
7962 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
7963 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
7964 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
7965 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
7966 was
7967 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
7968 formal working group should be formed.</p>
7969
7970 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
7971 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
7972 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
7973 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
7974 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
7975 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
7976 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
7977 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
7978
7979 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
7980 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
7981 IETF.</p>
7982
7983       </div>
7984       <div class="tags">
7985
7986
7987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7988
7989
7990       </div>
7991     </div>
7992     <div class="padding"></div>
7993
7994     <div class="entry">
7995       <div class="title">
7996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
7997       </div>
7998       <div class="date">
7999         12th September 2012
8000       </div>
8001       <div class="body">
8002         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
8003 publication of of
8004 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
8005 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
8006 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
8007 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
8008 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
8009 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
8010 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
8011 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
8012 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
8013 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
8014
8015 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
8016 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
8017 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
8018 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
8019
8020 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
8021 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
8022
8023       </div>
8024       <div class="tags">
8025
8026
8027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8028
8029
8030       </div>
8031     </div>
8032     <div class="padding"></div>
8033
8034     <div class="entry">
8035       <div class="title">
8036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8037       </div>
8038       <div class="date">
8039          7th September 2012
8040       </div>
8041       <div class="body">
8042         <p>As I
8043 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
8044 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8045 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8046 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
8047 repository for the project</a>.</p>
8048
8049 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8050 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8051 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8052 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
8053
8054 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8055 PostScript formats at
8056 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
8057 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
8058
8059       </div>
8060       <div class="tags">
8061
8062
8063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8064
8065
8066       </div>
8067     </div>
8068     <div class="padding"></div>
8069
8070     <div class="entry">
8071       <div class="title">
8072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
8073       </div>
8074       <div class="date">
8075         23rd August 2012
8076       </div>
8077       <div class="body">
8078         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
8079 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
8080 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
8081 revisit the great site
8082 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
8083 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
8084 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
8085
8086       </div>
8087       <div class="tags">
8088
8089
8090         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8091
8092
8093       </div>
8094     </div>
8095     <div class="padding"></div>
8096
8097     <div class="entry">
8098       <div class="title">
8099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
8100       </div>
8101       <div class="date">
8102         17th August 2012
8103       </div>
8104       <div class="body">
8105         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
8106 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
8107 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
8108 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
8109 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
8110 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
8111 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
8112 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
8113 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
8114 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
8115 summer I
8116 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
8117 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
8118 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
8119
8120 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
8121 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
8122 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
8123 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
8124 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
8125 progress:</p>
8126
8127 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
8128
8129 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
8130 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
8131 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
8132 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
8133 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
8134 english version of the docbook source.</p>
8135
8136 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
8137 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
8138 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
8139 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
8140 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
8141 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
8142 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
8143 project files currently available from <a
8144 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8145
8146 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8147 the updated
8148 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
8149 and
8150 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
8151 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8152 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8153 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
8154
8155       </div>
8156       <div class="tags">
8157
8158
8159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8160
8161
8162       </div>
8163     </div>
8164     <div class="padding"></div>
8165
8166     <div class="entry">
8167       <div class="title">
8168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
8169       </div>
8170       <div class="date">
8171         10th August 2012
8172       </div>
8173       <div class="body">
8174         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
8175 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
8176 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
8177 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
8178 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
8179 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
8180 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
8181 case for the language
8182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
8183 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
8184
8185 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
8186 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
8187 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
8188 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
8189 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
8190
8191 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
8192 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
8193 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
8194 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
8195 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
8196 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
8197 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
8198 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
8199 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
8200 alias for 'nb'.</p>
8201
8202 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
8203 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
8204 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
8205 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
8206 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
8207 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
8208 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
8209 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
8210 at the same time. :(</p>
8211
8212 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
8213 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
8214 processors. :(</p>
8215
8216 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
8217
8218       </div>
8219       <div class="tags">
8220
8221
8222         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8223
8224
8225       </div>
8226     </div>
8227     <div class="padding"></div>
8228
8229     <div class="entry">
8230       <div class="title">
8231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="date">
8234         31st July 2012
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="body">
8237         <p>I tried to send this text to the
8238 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
8239 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
8240 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
8241 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
8242 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
8243 out.</p>
8244
8245 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
8246 learning curve at the moment.</p>
8247
8248 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
8249 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
8250 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
8251 available from
8252 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
8253 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
8254 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
8255 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
8256 Squeeze.</p>
8257
8258 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
8259 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
8260 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
8261 problems.</p>
8262
8263 <ul>
8264
8265 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
8266    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
8267    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
8268    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
8269    index references spanning several pages (See
8270    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
8271    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
8272    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
8273
8274 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
8275    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
8276    #683163</a>).</li>
8277
8278 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
8279    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
8280    footnote and text body, see
8281    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
8282    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
8283    refs listed are not right).</li>
8284
8285 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
8286
8287 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
8288    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
8289
8290 </ul>
8291
8292 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
8293 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
8294 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
8295
8296 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
8297
8298       </div>
8299       <div class="tags">
8300
8301
8302         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8303
8304
8305       </div>
8306     </div>
8307     <div class="padding"></div>
8308
8309     <div class="entry">
8310       <div class="title">
8311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
8312       </div>
8313       <div class="date">
8314         21st July 2012
8315       </div>
8316       <div class="body">
8317         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
8318 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
8319 norwegian version</a> of the book
8320 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
8321 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
8322 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
8323 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
8324 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8325
8326 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
8327 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
8328 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
8329 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
8330 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
8331 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
8332 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
8333 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
8334 print. :)</p>
8335
8336 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
8337 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
8338 language.</p>
8339
8340       </div>
8341       <div class="tags">
8342
8343
8344         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8345
8346
8347       </div>
8348     </div>
8349     <div class="padding"></div>
8350
8351     <div class="entry">
8352       <div class="title">
8353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
8354       </div>
8355       <div class="date">
8356         16th July 2012
8357       </div>
8358       <div class="body">
8359         <p>I am currently working on a
8360 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
8361 to translate</a> the book
8362 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
8363 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
8364 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
8365 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
8366 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
8367 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
8368 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8369
8370 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
8371 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
8372 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
8373 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
8374 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
8375 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
8376 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
8377 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
8378 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
8379
8380       </div>
8381       <div class="tags">
8382
8383
8384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8385
8386
8387       </div>
8388     </div>
8389     <div class="padding"></div>
8390
8391     <div class="entry">
8392       <div class="title">
8393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
8394       </div>
8395       <div class="date">
8396          9th July 2012
8397       </div>
8398       <div class="body">
8399         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8400 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
8401 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
8402 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
8403 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
8404 to adjust and scale the just released
8405 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8406 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
8407 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
8408
8409 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8410
8411 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
8412 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
8413 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
8414 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
8415 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
8416 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
8417 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
8418 perspective when working with IT.</p>
8419
8420 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8421 project?</strong></p>
8422
8423 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
8424 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
8425 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
8426 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
8427 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
8428 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
8429
8430 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8431 Edu?</strong></p>
8432
8433 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
8434 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
8435 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
8436 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
8437 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
8438 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
8439 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
8440 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
8441 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
8442 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
8443 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
8444 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
8445 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
8446 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
8447 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
8448 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
8449 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
8450 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
8451 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
8452 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
8453 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
8454 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
8455 quicker to update.
8456
8457 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8458 Edu?</strong></p>
8459
8460 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
8461 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
8462 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
8463 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
8464 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
8465 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
8466
8467 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
8468 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
8469 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
8470 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
8471 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
8472 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
8473 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
8474 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
8475 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
8476 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
8477 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
8478 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
8479 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
8480 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
8481 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
8482
8483 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
8484 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
8485 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
8486 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
8487 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
8488 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
8489 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
8490 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
8491
8492 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
8493 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
8494 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
8495 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
8496 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
8497 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
8498 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
8499 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
8500 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
8501 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
8502 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
8503 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
8504 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
8505 sound file.</p>
8506
8507 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
8508 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
8509 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
8510 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
8511 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
8512 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
8513 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
8514 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
8515 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
8516
8517 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8518
8519 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
8520 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
8521 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
8522 )</p>
8523
8524 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8525 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8526
8527 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
8528 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
8529 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
8530 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
8531 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
8532 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
8533 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
8534 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
8535 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
8536 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
8537 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
8538 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
8539 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
8540 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
8541 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
8542
8543 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
8544 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
8545 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
8546 management with Airtime</a>,
8547 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
8548 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
8549 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
8550 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
8551 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
8552
8553       </div>
8554       <div class="tags">
8555
8556
8557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8558
8559
8560       </div>
8561     </div>
8562     <div class="padding"></div>
8563
8564     <div class="entry">
8565       <div class="title">
8566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
8567       </div>
8568       <div class="date">
8569          8th July 2012
8570       </div>
8571       <div class="body">
8572         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
8573 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
8574 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
8575 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
8576 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
8577 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
8578 Steinberg in his blog post
8579 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
8580 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
8581 spending of your tax money.</p>
8582
8583 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
8584 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
8585 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
8586 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
8587 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
8588 purchases.</p>
8589
8590       </div>
8591       <div class="tags">
8592
8593
8594         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8595
8596
8597       </div>
8598     </div>
8599     <div class="padding"></div>
8600
8601     <div class="entry">
8602       <div class="title">
8603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
8604       </div>
8605       <div class="date">
8606          7th July 2012
8607       </div>
8608       <div class="body">
8609         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8610 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
8611 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
8612 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
8613 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
8614 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
8615 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
8616 receive.  The software is
8617
8618 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
8619 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
8620 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
8621 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
8622 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
8623 Windows</a>.</p>
8624
8625 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
8626 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
8627
8628 <p><ul>
8629
8630   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
8631     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
8632
8633   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
8634     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
8635     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
8636     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
8637     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
8638     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
8639     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
8640     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
8641     </li>
8642
8643   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
8644     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
8645
8646   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
8647     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
8648
8649   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
8650     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
8651
8652   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
8653
8654   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
8655     formats </li>
8656
8657   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
8658     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
8659     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
8660     (as separate sets)</li>
8661
8662   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
8663     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
8664     percentage)</li>
8665
8666   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
8667     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
8668     memory):
8669     <ul>
8670       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
8671       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
8672       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
8673       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
8674       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
8675       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
8676       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
8677       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
8678       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
8679       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
8680           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
8681           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
8682           activity)</li>
8683       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
8684       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
8685     </ul></li>
8686
8687   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
8688     <ul>
8689       <li>Break periods</li>
8690       <li>For teacher(s):
8691         <ul>
8692           <li>Not available periods</li>
8693           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
8694           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8695           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8696           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8697           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8698
8699           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8700             days per week</li>
8701         </ul></li>
8702       <li>For students (sets):
8703         <ul>
8704           <li>Not available periods</li>
8705           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
8706           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
8707           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
8708           <li>Min hours daily</li>
8709           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
8710
8711           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
8712             days per week</li>
8713         </ul></li>
8714       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
8715         <ul>
8716           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
8717           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
8718           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
8719           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
8720           <li>End(s) students day</li>
8721           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
8722           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
8723             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
8724           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
8725           <li>Not overlapping</li>
8726           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
8727           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
8728         </ul></li>
8729     </ul></li>
8730
8731   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
8732     <ul>
8733       <li>Room not available periods</li>
8734       <li>For teacher(s):
8735         <ul>
8736           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8737           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8738           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8739         </ul>
8740       </li>
8741
8742       <li>For students (sets):
8743         <ul>
8744           <li>Home room(s)</li>
8745           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
8746           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
8747         </ul>
8748       </li>
8749       <li>Preferred room(s):
8750         <ul>
8751           <li>For a subject</li>
8752           <li>For an activity tag</li>
8753           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
8754           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
8755         </ul>
8756       </li>
8757
8758       <li>For a set of activities:
8759         <ul>
8760           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
8761         </ul>
8762       </li>
8763     </ul>
8764   </li>
8765 </ul></p>
8766
8767 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
8768 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
8769 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
8770 manually, check it out.
8771
8772 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
8773 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
8774 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
8775 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
8776 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
8777 section</a>.</p>
8778
8779       </div>
8780       <div class="tags">
8781
8782
8783         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8784
8785
8786       </div>
8787     </div>
8788     <div class="padding"></div>
8789
8790     <div class="entry">
8791       <div class="title">
8792         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
8793       </div>
8794       <div class="date">
8795          3rd July 2012
8796       </div>
8797       <div class="body">
8798         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
8799 project (Norwegian version of
8800 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
8801 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
8802 a problem with the municipalities using
8803 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
8804 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
8805 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
8806 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
8807 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
8808 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
8809 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
8810 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
8811 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
8812 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
8813 the From: header.</p>
8814
8815 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
8816 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
8817 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
8818 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
8819 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
8820 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
8821 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
8822 behaviour.</p>
8823
8824 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
8825 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
8826 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
8827 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
8828 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
8829 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
8830 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
8831
8832       </div>
8833       <div class="tags">
8834
8835
8836         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8837
8838
8839       </div>
8840     </div>
8841     <div class="padding"></div>
8842
8843     <div class="entry">
8844       <div class="title">
8845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
8846       </div>
8847       <div class="date">
8848         26th June 2012
8849       </div>
8850       <div class="body">
8851         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
8852 another interview with the people behind
8853 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8854 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
8855 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
8856 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
8857 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
8858 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8859 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8860
8861 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8862
8863 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
8864 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
8865 ICT in schools</p>
8866
8867 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8868 project?</strong></p>
8869
8870 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
8871 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
8872 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
8873 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
8874
8875 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8876 Edu?</strong></p>
8877
8878 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
8879 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
8880 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
8881 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
8882
8883 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8884 Edu?</strong></p>
8885
8886 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
8887 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
8888 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
8889 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
8890 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
8891 technologies in school.</p>
8892
8893 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8894
8895 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
8896 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
8897 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
8898
8899 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8900 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8901
8902 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
8903 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
8904 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
8905 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
8906
8907 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
8908 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
8909 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
8910
8911 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
8912 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
8913 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
8914 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
8915 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
8916 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
8917 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
8918 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
8919 working there.</p>
8920
8921       </div>
8922       <div class="tags">
8923
8924
8925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8926
8927
8928       </div>
8929     </div>
8930     <div class="padding"></div>
8931
8932     <div class="entry">
8933       <div class="title">
8934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8935       </div>
8936       <div class="date">
8937         24th June 2012
8938       </div>
8939       <div class="body">
8940         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8941 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8942 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8943 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8944 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8945 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8946 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8947 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8948 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8949 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8950 missing in my book.</p>
8951
8952 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8953 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8954 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8955 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8956 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8957 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8958 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8959
8960       </div>
8961       <div class="tags">
8962
8963
8964         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8965
8966
8967       </div>
8968     </div>
8969     <div class="padding"></div>
8970
8971     <div class="entry">
8972       <div class="title">
8973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
8974       </div>
8975       <div class="date">
8976         11th June 2012
8977       </div>
8978       <div class="body">
8979         <p>During my work on
8980 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
8981 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
8982 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
8983 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
8984 explanation.</p>
8985
8986 <p><ul>
8987
8988 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
8989 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
8990 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
8991 system depend on tasksel tasks in
8992 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
8993 installation.</li>
8994
8995 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
8996 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
8997 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
8998 at least try to enable it for these services:
8999 <ul>
9000
9001   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
9002     quotas.</li>
9003   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
9004   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
9005   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
9006   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
9007   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
9008
9009 </ul></li>
9010
9011 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
9012 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
9013 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
9014 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
9015
9016 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
9017 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
9018 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
9019
9020 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
9021 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
9022 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
9023 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
9024 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
9025 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
9026
9027 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
9028 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
9029 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
9030 in Wheezy.
9031
9032 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
9033 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
9034 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
9035
9036 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
9037 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
9038 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
9039 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
9040
9041 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
9042 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
9043 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
9044 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
9045
9046 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
9047 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
9048 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
9049
9050 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
9051 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
9052 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
9053
9054 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
9055 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
9056 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
9057 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
9058 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
9059
9060 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
9061 <ul>
9062
9063 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
9064 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
9065 <li>and probably more?</li>
9066 </ul></li>
9067
9068 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
9069 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
9070 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
9071 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
9072 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
9073 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
9074 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
9075 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
9076
9077
9078 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
9079 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
9080 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
9081 use.</li>
9082
9083 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
9084 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
9085 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
9086 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
9087 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
9088
9089 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
9090 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
9091 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
9092 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
9093 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
9094 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
9095
9096 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
9097 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
9098 There are at least three implementations,
9099 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
9100 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
9101 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
9102 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
9103 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
9104 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
9105 given room.</li>
9106
9107 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
9108 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
9109 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
9110 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
9111 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
9112 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
9113 investigated.</li>
9114
9115 </ul></p>
9116
9117 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
9118 version.</p>
9119
9120       </div>
9121       <div class="tags">
9122
9123
9124         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9125
9126
9127       </div>
9128     </div>
9129     <div class="padding"></div>
9130
9131     <div class="entry">
9132       <div class="title">
9133         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
9134       </div>
9135       <div class="date">
9136          9th June 2012
9137       </div>
9138       <div class="body">
9139         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
9140 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
9141 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
9142 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
9143 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
9144 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
9145 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
9146 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
9147 be willing to pay for.</p>
9148
9149 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
9150 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
9151 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
9152 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
9153 Orwell</a>.</p>
9154
9155       </div>
9156       <div class="tags">
9157
9158
9159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9160
9161
9162       </div>
9163     </div>
9164     <div class="padding"></div>
9165
9166     <div class="entry">
9167       <div class="title">
9168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
9169       </div>
9170       <div class="date">
9171          6th June 2012
9172       </div>
9173       <div class="body">
9174         <p>A few days ago
9175 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
9176 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
9177 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
9178 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
9179 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
9180 code for HP, Dell and IBM
9181 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
9182 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
9183 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
9184 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
9185 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
9186
9187 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
9188 output:
9189
9190 <blockquote><pre>
9191 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
9192 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
9193 %
9194 </pre></blockquote>
9195
9196 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
9197 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
9198 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
9199
9200       </div>
9201       <div class="tags">
9202
9203
9204         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9205
9206
9207       </div>
9208     </div>
9209     <div class="padding"></div>
9210
9211     <div class="entry">
9212       <div class="title">
9213         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
9214       </div>
9215       <div class="date">
9216          2nd June 2012
9217       </div>
9218       <div class="body">
9219         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
9220 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9221 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
9222 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
9223 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9224 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9225
9226 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9227
9228 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
9229 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
9230 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
9231 by Angela).</p>
9232
9233 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
9234 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
9235 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
9236 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
9237 becoming an osteopath.</p>
9238
9239 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
9240 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
9241 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
9242 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
9243 skills with communication skills.</p>
9244
9245 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9246 project?</strong></p>
9247
9248 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
9249 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
9250 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
9251 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
9252 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
9253
9254 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
9255 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
9256 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
9257 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
9258 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
9259 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
9260 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
9261 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
9262 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
9263
9264 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
9265 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
9266 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
9267
9268 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
9269
9270 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
9271 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
9272 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
9273 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
9274 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
9275 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
9276 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
9277 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
9278 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
9279 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
9280 point.</p>
9281
9282 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
9283 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
9284 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
9285 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
9286 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
9287 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
9288
9289 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
9290 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
9291 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
9292 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
9293 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
9294 spare time.</p>
9295
9296 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
9297 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
9298 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
9299 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
9300 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
9301
9302 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
9303 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
9304 avoidance do exist.</p>
9305
9306 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
9307 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
9308 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
9309 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
9310 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
9311 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
9312 and probably a gain for all.</p>
9313
9314 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9315 Edu?</strong></p>
9316
9317 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
9318 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
9319 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
9320 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
9321 project communication, honest communication within the group of
9322 developers, etc.</p>
9323
9324 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9325 Edu?</strong></p>
9326
9327 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
9328
9329 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
9330 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
9331 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
9332 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
9333 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
9334 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
9335 contribute).</p>
9336
9337 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
9338 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
9339 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
9340 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
9341 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
9342 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
9343 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
9344 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
9345 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
9346 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
9347
9348 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9349
9350 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
9351
9352 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
9353 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
9354 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
9355
9356 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
9357 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
9358 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
9359 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
9360
9361 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
9362 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
9363 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
9364 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
9365 whiteboard.</p>
9366
9367 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
9368
9369 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9370 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9371
9372 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
9373 enrol people.</p>
9374
9375       </div>
9376       <div class="tags">
9377
9378
9379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9380
9381
9382       </div>
9383     </div>
9384     <div class="padding"></div>
9385
9386     <div class="entry">
9387       <div class="title">
9388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
9389       </div>
9390       <div class="date">
9391          1st June 2012
9392       </div>
9393       <div class="body">
9394         <p>A few years ago I wrote
9395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
9396 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
9397 I have learned from colleges here at the
9398 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
9399 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
9400 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
9401 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
9402 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
9403
9404 <p><pre>
9405 use strict;
9406 use warnings;
9407 use SOAP::Lite;
9408 use Data::Dumper;
9409 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
9410 my $App = 'test';
9411 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
9412 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
9413 my $s = SOAP::Lite
9414     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
9415     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
9416     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
9417     ;
9418 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
9419     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
9420     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
9421     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
9422 );
9423 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
9424 </pre></p>
9425
9426 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
9427
9428 <p><pre>
9429 $VAR1 = {
9430           'Asset' => {
9431                      'Entitlements' => {
9432                                        'EntitlementData' => [
9433                                                             {
9434                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9435                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9436                                                               'Provider' => '',
9437                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9438                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9439                                                             },
9440                                                             {
9441                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9442                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9443                                                               'Provider' => '',
9444                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9445                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9446                                                             },
9447                                                             {
9448                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9449                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
9450                                                               'Provider' => '',
9451                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9452                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9453                                                             }
9454                                                           ]
9455                                      },
9456                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
9457                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
9458                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
9459                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
9460                                           'Buid' => '2323',
9461                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
9462                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
9463                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
9464                                         }
9465                    }
9466         };
9467 </pre></p>
9468
9469 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
9470 service outside the
9471 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
9472 documentation</a>, and according to
9473 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
9474 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
9475 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
9476
9477 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
9478 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
9479
9480       </div>
9481       <div class="tags">
9482
9483
9484         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9485
9486
9487       </div>
9488     </div>
9489     <div class="padding"></div>
9490
9491     <div class="entry">
9492       <div class="title">
9493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
9494       </div>
9495       <div class="date">
9496         31st May 2012
9497       </div>
9498       <div class="body">
9499         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
9500 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
9501 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
9502 running Debian Squeeze, where
9503 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
9504 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
9505 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
9506 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
9507 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
9508 another day.</p>
9509
9510 <p>After calibration, I get a
9511 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
9512 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
9513 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
9514 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
9515 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
9516 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
9517 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
9518 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
9519 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
9520 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
9521 and a simple</p>
9522
9523 <p><pre>
9524 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
9525 </pre></p>
9526
9527 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
9528 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
9529 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
9530 enough for now.</p>
9531
9532       </div>
9533       <div class="tags">
9534
9535
9536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9537
9538
9539       </div>
9540     </div>
9541     <div class="padding"></div>
9542
9543     <div class="entry">
9544       <div class="title">
9545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
9546       </div>
9547       <div class="date">
9548         27th May 2012
9549       </div>
9550       <div class="body">
9551         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
9552 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9553 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
9554 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
9555 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
9556 since then, helping to make sure the
9557 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9558 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
9559
9560 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9561
9562 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
9563 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
9564 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
9565 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
9566 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
9567 our computer network.</p>
9568
9569 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
9570 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
9571 (4 months).</p>
9572
9573 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9574 project?</strong></p>
9575
9576 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
9577 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
9578 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
9579 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
9580 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
9581 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
9582 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
9583 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
9584 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
9585 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
9586 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
9587 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
9588 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
9589 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
9590
9591 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9592 Edu?</strong></p>
9593
9594 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
9595 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
9596 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
9597 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
9598 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
9599 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
9600 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
9601 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
9602
9603 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9604 Edu?</strong></p>
9605
9606 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
9607 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
9608 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
9609 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
9610 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
9611 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
9612 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
9613 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
9614 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
9615 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
9616 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
9617 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
9618
9619 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9620
9621 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
9622 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
9623 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
9624
9625 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9626 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9627
9628 <p><ol>
9629
9630 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
9631 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
9632 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
9633 developing.</li>
9634
9635 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
9636 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
9637 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
9638 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
9639 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
9640
9641 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
9642 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
9643 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
9644
9645 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
9646 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
9647 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
9648 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
9649
9650 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
9651 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
9652 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
9653
9654 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
9655
9656 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
9657 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
9658 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
9659 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
9660
9661 </ol></p>
9662
9663       </div>
9664       <div class="tags">
9665
9666
9667         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9668
9669
9670       </div>
9671     </div>
9672     <div class="padding"></div>
9673
9674     <div class="entry">
9675       <div class="title">
9676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
9677       </div>
9678       <div class="date">
9679         26th May 2012
9680       </div>
9681       <div class="body">
9682         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
9683 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
9684 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
9685 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
9686 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
9687
9688 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
9689 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
9690 comment:</p>
9691
9692 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
9693 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
9694 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
9695 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
9696 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
9697 </blockquote></p>
9698
9699 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
9700 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
9701 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
9702 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
9703 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
9704 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
9705 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
9706 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
9707 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
9708 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
9709 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
9710 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
9711 of wasted effort.</p>
9712
9713 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
9714 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
9715 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
9716
9717 <p>See
9718 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
9719 and
9720 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
9721 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
9722 </blockquote></p>
9723
9724       </div>
9725       <div class="tags">
9726
9727
9728         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9729
9730
9731       </div>
9732     </div>
9733     <div class="padding"></div>
9734
9735     <div class="entry">
9736       <div class="title">
9737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="date">
9740         18th May 2012
9741       </div>
9742       <div class="body">
9743         <p>In january, I
9744 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
9745 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
9746 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
9747 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
9748 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
9749 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
9750 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
9751 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
9752 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
9753 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
9754
9755 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
9756 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
9757 drivers. :)</p>
9758
9759       </div>
9760       <div class="tags">
9761
9762
9763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9764
9765
9766       </div>
9767     </div>
9768     <div class="padding"></div>
9769
9770     <div class="entry">
9771       <div class="title">
9772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
9773       </div>
9774       <div class="date">
9775         13th May 2012
9776       </div>
9777       <div class="body">
9778         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
9779 publish another interview with the people behind
9780 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9781 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
9782 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
9783 details get right before release.
9784
9785 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9786
9787 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
9788 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
9789 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
9790 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
9791 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
9792 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
9793 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
9794 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
9795
9796 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
9797 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
9798 home since 2006.</p>
9799
9800 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9801 project?</strong></p>
9802
9803 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
9804 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
9805 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
9806 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
9807 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
9808 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
9809
9810 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
9811 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
9812 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
9813 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
9814 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
9815 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
9816 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
9817 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
9818 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
9819 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
9820 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
9821 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
9822 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
9823 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
9824 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
9825 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
9826
9827 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9828 Edu?</strong></p>
9829
9830 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
9831 for me as today.</p>
9832
9833 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
9834
9835 <p><ul>
9836
9837 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
9838 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
9839
9840 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
9841 cost.</li>
9842
9843 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
9844 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
9845 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
9846 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
9847 server</li>
9848
9849 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
9850 school.</li>
9851
9852 </ul></p>
9853
9854 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
9855 came up in this way:</p>
9856
9857 <p><ul>
9858
9859 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
9860 now.</li>
9861
9862 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
9863 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
9864 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
9865
9866 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
9867 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
9868 interfaces used in the past.</li>
9869
9870 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
9871 different needs.</li>
9872
9873 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
9874
9875 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
9876 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
9877 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
9878
9879 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
9880 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
9881
9882 </ul></p>
9883
9884 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9885 Edu?</strong></p>
9886
9887 <p><ul>
9888
9889 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
9890 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
9891 whole municipality areas.</li>
9892
9893 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
9894 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
9895 politicians.</li>
9896
9897 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
9898
9899 </ul></p>
9900
9901 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9902
9903 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
9904 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
9905 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
9906 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
9907 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
9908 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
9909
9910 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
9911 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
9912 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
9913 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
9914 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
9915
9916 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9917 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9918
9919 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
9920 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
9921 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
9922
9923       </div>
9924       <div class="tags">
9925
9926
9927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9928
9929
9930       </div>
9931     </div>
9932     <div class="padding"></div>
9933
9934     <div class="entry">
9935       <div class="title">
9936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
9937       </div>
9938       <div class="date">
9939         30th April 2012
9940       </div>
9941       <div class="body">
9942         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
9943 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
9944
9945 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
9946 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
9947 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
9948 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
9949 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
9950 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
9951 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
9952 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
9953 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
9954 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
9955 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
9956 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
9957 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
9958 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
9959 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
9960 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
9961
9962 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
9963 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
9964 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
9965 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
9966 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
9967 finally found a Danish supplier
9968 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
9969 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
9970 days ago.</p>
9971
9972 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
9973 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
9974 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
9975 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
9976 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
9977 toys.</p>
9978
9979       </div>
9980       <div class="tags">
9981
9982
9983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9984
9985
9986       </div>
9987     </div>
9988     <div class="padding"></div>
9989
9990     <div class="entry">
9991       <div class="title">
9992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
9993       </div>
9994       <div class="date">
9995         26th April 2012
9996       </div>
9997       <div class="body">
9998         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
9999 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
10000 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
10001 that the video editor application included with
10002 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
10003 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
10004 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
10005
10006 <p><blockquote>
10007 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
10008 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
10009 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
10010 </blockquote></p>
10011
10012 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
10013
10014 <p><blockquote>
10015 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
10016 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
10017 </blockquote></p>
10018
10019 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
10020 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
10021 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
10022 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
10023 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
10024 video.  AMR is
10025 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
10026 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
10027 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
10028 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
10029 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
10030 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
10031 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
10032
10033 <p>I know why I prefer
10034 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
10035 standards</a> also for video.</p>
10036
10037       </div>
10038       <div class="tags">
10039
10040
10041         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10042
10043
10044       </div>
10045     </div>
10046     <div class="padding"></div>
10047
10048     <div class="entry">
10049       <div class="title">
10050         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
10051       </div>
10052       <div class="date">
10053         19th April 2012
10054       </div>
10055       <div class="body">
10056         <p>Here in Norway, the
10057 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
10058 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
10059 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
10060 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
10061 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
10062 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
10063 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
10064 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
10065 on the same level.</p>
10066
10067 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
10068 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
10069 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
10070 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
10071 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
10072 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
10073 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
10074 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
10075 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
10076 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
10077 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
10078 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
10079 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
10080 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
10081 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
10082 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
10083 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
10084 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
10085
10086 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
10087 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
10088 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
10089 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
10090 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
10091 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
10092 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
10093 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
10094
10095 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
10096 from Simon Phipps
10097 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
10098 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
10099
10100 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
10101 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
10102 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
10103 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
10104 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
10105 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
10106 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
10107 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
10108 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
10109
10110       </div>
10111       <div class="tags">
10112
10113
10114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10115
10116
10117       </div>
10118     </div>
10119     <div class="padding"></div>
10120
10121     <div class="entry">
10122       <div class="title">
10123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
10124       </div>
10125       <div class="date">
10126         15th April 2012
10127       </div>
10128       <div class="body">
10129         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10130 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
10131 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
10132 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
10133 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
10134 up in the recently released
10135 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
10136 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10137
10138 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10139
10140 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
10141 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
10142 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
10143 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
10144 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
10145 information technology and science/technology.</p>
10146
10147 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10148 project?</strong></p>
10149
10150 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
10151 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
10152 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
10153 contributing.</p>
10154
10155 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10156 Edu?</strong></p>
10157
10158 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
10159 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
10160 Debian Project!</p>
10161
10162 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10163 Edu?</strong></p>
10164
10165 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
10166 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
10167 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
10168 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
10169 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
10170 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
10171 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
10172
10173 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
10174 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
10175
10176 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10177
10178 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
10179 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
10180 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
10181 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
10182
10183 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10184 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10185
10186 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
10187 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
10188 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
10189 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
10190 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
10191 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
10192 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
10193
10194 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
10195 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
10196 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
10197 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
10198 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
10199 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
10200 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
10201 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
10202
10203       </div>
10204       <div class="tags">
10205
10206
10207         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10208
10209
10210       </div>
10211     </div>
10212     <div class="padding"></div>
10213
10214     <div class="entry">
10215       <div class="title">
10216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
10217       </div>
10218       <div class="date">
10219          8th April 2012
10220       </div>
10221       <div class="body">
10222         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
10223 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
10224 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
10225 contributor to the
10226 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
10227 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
10228
10229 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10230
10231 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
10232 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
10233
10234 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10235 project?</strong></p>
10236
10237 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
10238 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
10239 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
10240 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
10241 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
10242 "localisation".</p>
10243
10244 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10245 Edu?</strong></p>
10246
10247 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10248 Edu?</strong></p>
10249
10250 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
10251 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
10252 education system.</p>
10253
10254 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
10255 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
10256 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
10257 money on the latest hardware.</p>
10258
10259 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10260
10261 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
10262 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
10263 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
10264
10265 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10266 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10267
10268 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
10269 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
10270 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
10271
10272       </div>
10273       <div class="tags">
10274
10275
10276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10277
10278
10279       </div>
10280     </div>
10281     <div class="padding"></div>
10282
10283     <div class="entry">
10284       <div class="title">
10285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
10286       </div>
10287       <div class="date">
10288          6th April 2012
10289       </div>
10290       <div class="body">
10291         <p>Recently I have spent time with
10292 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
10293 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10294 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
10295 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
10296 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
10297 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
10298 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
10299 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
10300
10301 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
10302 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
10303 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
10304 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
10305 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
10306 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
10307 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
10308 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
10309
10310 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
10311 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
10312 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
10313 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
10314 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
10315 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
10316 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
10317 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
10318
10319 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
10320 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
10321 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
10322 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
10323 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
10324 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
10325 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
10326 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
10327 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
10328 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
10329
10330 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
10331 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
10332 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
10333 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
10334
10335 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
10336 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
10337
10338       </div>
10339       <div class="tags">
10340
10341
10342         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10343
10344
10345       </div>
10346     </div>
10347     <div class="padding"></div>
10348
10349     <div class="entry">
10350       <div class="title">
10351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
10352       </div>
10353       <div class="date">
10354          5th April 2012
10355       </div>
10356       <div class="body">
10357         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
10358 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
10359 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
10360 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
10361 for schools.  Check out his article
10362 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
10363 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
10364
10365       </div>
10366       <div class="tags">
10367
10368
10369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10370
10371
10372       </div>
10373     </div>
10374     <div class="padding"></div>
10375
10376     <div class="entry">
10377       <div class="title">
10378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
10379       </div>
10380       <div class="date">
10381          1st April 2012
10382       </div>
10383       <div class="body">
10384         <p>Germany is a core area for the
10385 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10386 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
10387 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
10388
10389 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10390
10391 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
10392 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
10393 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
10394 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
10395 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
10396 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
10397 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
10398 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
10399
10400 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
10401 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
10402 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
10403 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
10404 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
10405 the end of April this year.</p>
10406
10407 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10408 project?</strong></p>
10409
10410 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
10411 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
10412 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
10413 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
10414 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
10415 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
10416 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
10417 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
10418 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
10419 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
10420 Skolelinux.</p>
10421
10422 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
10423 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
10424 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
10425 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
10426 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
10427 the admin teachers.</p>
10428
10429 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10430 Edu?</strong></p>
10431
10432 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
10433 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
10434 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
10435
10436 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
10437 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
10438 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
10439 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
10440 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
10441
10442 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10443 Edu?</strong></p>
10444
10445 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
10446
10447 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10448
10449 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
10450 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
10451 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
10452 LibreOffice.</p>
10453
10454 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10455 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10456
10457 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
10458 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
10459 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
10460
10461       </div>
10462       <div class="tags">
10463
10464
10465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10466
10467
10468       </div>
10469     </div>
10470     <div class="padding"></div>
10471
10472     <div class="entry">
10473       <div class="title">
10474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
10475       </div>
10476       <div class="date">
10477         25th March 2012
10478       </div>
10479       <div class="body">
10480         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10481
10482 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
10483 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
10484 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
10485 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
10486 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
10487 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
10488 and download as a
10489 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
10490 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10491
10492 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10493   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
10494     <p>Download video as
10495       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10496 </video></p>
10497
10498       </div>
10499       <div class="tags">
10500
10501
10502         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10503
10504
10505       </div>
10506     </div>
10507     <div class="padding"></div>
10508
10509     <div class="entry">
10510       <div class="title">
10511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
10512       </div>
10513       <div class="date">
10514         19th March 2012
10515       </div>
10516       <div class="body">
10517         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10518 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
10519 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10520 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
10521 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
10522
10523 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10524
10525 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
10526 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
10527 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
10528 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
10529 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
10530 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
10531 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
10532 installations.</p>
10533
10534 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10535 project?</strong></p>
10536
10537 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
10538 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
10539 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
10540 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
10541 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
10542 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
10543 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
10544 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
10545 these things we decided to try it.</p>
10546
10547 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10548 Edu?</strong></p>
10549
10550 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
10551 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
10552 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
10553 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
10554 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
10555 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
10556 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
10557 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
10558
10559 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10560 Edu?</strong></p>
10561
10562 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
10563 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
10564 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
10565 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
10566 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
10567
10568 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10569
10570 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
10571 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
10572 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
10573 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
10574 that counts...)</p>
10575
10576 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10577 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10578
10579 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
10580 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
10581 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
10582 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
10583 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
10584 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
10585 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
10586 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
10587 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
10588 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
10589 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
10590
10591 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
10592 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
10593 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
10594
10595       </div>
10596       <div class="tags">
10597
10598
10599         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10600
10601
10602       </div>
10603     </div>
10604     <div class="padding"></div>
10605
10606     <div class="entry">
10607       <div class="title">
10608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
10609       </div>
10610       <div class="date">
10611         16th March 2012
10612       </div>
10613       <div class="body">
10614         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
10615 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
10616 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
10617 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
10618
10619 <ol>
10620
10621 <li>The documentation is written in a
10622 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
10623 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
10624 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
10625 docbook XML.</li>
10626
10627 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
10628 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
10629 with the translated text.</li>
10630
10631 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
10632 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
10633 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
10634 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
10635 images.</li>
10636
10637 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
10638 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
10639
10640 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
10641 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
10642
10643 </ol>
10644
10645 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
10646 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
10647 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
10648 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
10649 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
10650
10651 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
10652 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
10653 package</a>.</p>
10654
10655       </div>
10656       <div class="tags">
10657
10658
10659         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10660
10661
10662       </div>
10663     </div>
10664     <div class="padding"></div>
10665
10666     <div class="entry">
10667       <div class="title">
10668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
10669       </div>
10670       <div class="date">
10671         11th March 2012
10672       </div>
10673       <div class="body">
10674         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
10675 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
10676 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10677 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
10678 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
10679 you have not done so already.</p>
10680
10681 <p>I plan to present the new version at
10682 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
10683 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
10684 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
10685
10686       </div>
10687       <div class="tags">
10688
10689
10690         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10691
10692
10693       </div>
10694     </div>
10695     <div class="padding"></div>
10696
10697     <div class="entry">
10698       <div class="title">
10699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
10700       </div>
10701       <div class="date">
10702          9th March 2012
10703       </div>
10704       <div class="body">
10705         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
10706 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
10707 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10708 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
10709 more international audience.</p>
10710
10711 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10712 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
10713 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
10714 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
10715 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
10716 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
10717 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
10718
10719
10720 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10721
10722 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
10723 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
10724 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
10725 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
10726 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
10727 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
10728 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
10729 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
10730 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
10731 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
10732 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
10733
10734 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10735 project?</strong></p>
10736
10737 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
10738 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
10739 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
10740 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
10741 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
10742 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
10743 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
10744 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
10745 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
10746 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
10747 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
10748 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
10749 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
10750
10751 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10752 Edu?</strong></p>
10753
10754 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
10755 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
10756 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
10757 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
10758 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
10759 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
10760 Japan.</p>
10761
10762 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10763 Edu?</strong></p>
10764
10765 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
10766 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
10767 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
10768 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
10769 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
10770 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
10771 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
10772 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
10773 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
10774 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
10775 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
10776 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
10777 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
10778 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
10779 help.</p>
10780
10781 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10782
10783 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
10784 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
10785 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
10786 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
10787 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
10788 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
10789 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
10790 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
10791 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
10792 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
10793 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
10794
10795 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10796 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10797
10798 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
10799 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
10800 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
10801 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
10802 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
10803 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
10804 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
10805 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
10806 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
10807 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
10808 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
10809 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
10810
10811       </div>
10812       <div class="tags">
10813
10814
10815         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10816
10817
10818       </div>
10819     </div>
10820     <div class="padding"></div>
10821
10822     <div class="entry">
10823       <div class="title">
10824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
10825       </div>
10826       <div class="date">
10827          7th March 2012
10828       </div>
10829       <div class="body">
10830         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10831
10832 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
10833 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
10834 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
10835 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
10836 download as a
10837 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
10838 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10839
10840 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10841   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
10842     <p>Download video as
10843       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10844 </video></p>
10845
10846       </div>
10847       <div class="tags">
10848
10849
10850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10851
10852
10853       </div>
10854     </div>
10855     <div class="padding"></div>
10856
10857     <div class="entry">
10858       <div class="title">
10859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10860       </div>
10861       <div class="date">
10862          4th March 2012
10863       </div>
10864       <div class="body">
10865         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
10866 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10867 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10868 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
10869 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
10870 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10871
10872       </div>
10873       <div class="tags">
10874
10875
10876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10877
10878
10879       </div>
10880     </div>
10881     <div class="padding"></div>
10882
10883     <div class="entry">
10884       <div class="title">
10885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
10886       </div>
10887       <div class="date">
10888          3rd March 2012
10889       </div>
10890       <div class="body">
10891         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10892 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
10893 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
10894 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
10895 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
10896 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
10897 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
10898 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
10899 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
10900 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
10901 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
10902 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
10903 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
10904 year...</p>
10905
10906 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
10907 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
10908 name,
10909 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
10910 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
10911 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
10912 mean). I've been following
10913 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
10914 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
10915 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
10916 Check it out. :)</p>
10917
10918       </div>
10919       <div class="tags">
10920
10921
10922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10923
10924
10925       </div>
10926     </div>
10927     <div class="padding"></div>
10928
10929     <div class="entry">
10930       <div class="title">
10931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10932       </div>
10933       <div class="date">
10934         27th February 2012
10935       </div>
10936       <div class="body">
10937         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
10938 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10939 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
10940 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
10941 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
10942 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
10943 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10944
10945       </div>
10946       <div class="tags">
10947
10948
10949         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10950
10951
10952       </div>
10953     </div>
10954     <div class="padding"></div>
10955
10956     <div class="entry">
10957       <div class="title">
10958         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10959       </div>
10960       <div class="date">
10961         19th February 2012
10962       </div>
10963       <div class="body">
10964         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
10965 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
10966 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10967 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10968 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
10969 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
10970 solution for your school.</p>
10971
10972       </div>
10973       <div class="tags">
10974
10975
10976         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10977
10978
10979       </div>
10980     </div>
10981     <div class="padding"></div>
10982
10983     <div class="entry">
10984       <div class="title">
10985         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
10986       </div>
10987       <div class="date">
10988         14th February 2012
10989       </div>
10990       <div class="body">
10991         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
10992 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
10993 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
10994 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
10995 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
10996 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
10997 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
10998 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
10999 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
11000
11001 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
11002 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
11003 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
11004 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
11005 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
11006
11007 <blockquote><pre>
11008 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
11009 do
11010     printf "Failed disk $d: "
11011     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
11012 done
11013 </blockquote></pre>
11014
11015 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
11016 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
11017
11018 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
11019
11020 <blockquote><pre>
11021 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11022 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11023 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
11024 </blockquote></pre>
11025
11026 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
11027 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
11028 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
11029 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
11030 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
11031 mounted inside my box.</p>
11032
11033 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
11034 Software RAID in the
11035 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
11036 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
11037 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
11038 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
11039 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
11040 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
11041
11042       </div>
11043       <div class="tags">
11044
11045
11046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
11047
11048
11049       </div>
11050     </div>
11051     <div class="padding"></div>
11052
11053     <div class="entry">
11054       <div class="title">
11055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11056       </div>
11057       <div class="date">
11058         13th February 2012
11059       </div>
11060       <div class="body">
11061         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
11062 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
11063 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
11064 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
11065 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
11066 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
11067 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
11068 change the global proxy setting by editing
11069 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
11070 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
11071
11072 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
11073 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
11074 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
11075
11076 <blockquote><pre>
11077 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
11078 {
11079    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
11080        isPlainHostName(host) ||
11081        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
11082       return "DIRECT";
11083    else
11084       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
11085 }
11086 </pre></blockquote>
11087
11088 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
11089
11090 <blockquote><pre>
11091 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11092 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11093 </pre></blockquote>
11094
11095 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
11096 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
11097 would be used for
11098 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
11099 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
11100 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
11101 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
11102 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
11103 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
11104 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
11105 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
11106 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
11107 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
11108
11109 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
11110 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
11111 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
11112 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
11113 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
11114 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
11115
11116 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
11117 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
11118 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
11119 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
11120 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
11121 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
11122 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
11123 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
11124 the network setup changes.</p>
11125
11126 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
11127 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
11128 draft</a> and a
11129 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
11130 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
11131
11132       </div>
11133       <div class="tags">
11134
11135
11136         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11137
11138
11139       </div>
11140     </div>
11141     <div class="padding"></div>
11142
11143     <div class="entry">
11144       <div class="title">
11145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="date">
11148          5th February 2012
11149       </div>
11150       <div class="body">
11151         <p>Since the Lenny version of
11152 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
11153 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
11154 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
11155 in the morning.  This is done using the
11156 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
11157
11158 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
11159 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
11160 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
11161 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
11162 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
11163 the
11164 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
11165 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
11166 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
11167 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
11168 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
11169
11170 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
11171 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
11172 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
11173 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
11174 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
11175 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
11176 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
11177
11178 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
11179 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
11180 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
11181 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
11182 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
11183
11184       </div>
11185       <div class="tags">
11186
11187
11188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11189
11190
11191       </div>
11192     </div>
11193     <div class="padding"></div>
11194
11195     <div class="entry">
11196       <div class="title">
11197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11198       </div>
11199       <div class="date">
11200          4th February 2012
11201       </div>
11202       <div class="body">
11203         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
11204 publish the third beta version of
11205 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11206 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
11207 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
11208 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
11209 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11210 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
11211 on the project announcement list.</p>
11212
11213 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
11214 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
11215
11216 <ul>
11217
11218 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
11219   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
11220   the installation.</li>
11221
11222 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
11223   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
11224
11225 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
11226   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
11227   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
11228
11229 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
11230   for the local system administrator is created during installation
11231   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
11232   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
11233   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
11234   up to date on the system.</li>
11235
11236 </ul>
11237
11238 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
11239 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
11240 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
11241 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
11242
11243 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
11244 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
11245 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
11246 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
11247 will see you there?</p>
11248
11249       </div>
11250       <div class="tags">
11251
11252
11253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11254
11255
11256       </div>
11257     </div>
11258     <div class="padding"></div>
11259
11260     <div class="entry">
11261       <div class="title">
11262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
11263       </div>
11264       <div class="date">
11265         27th January 2012
11266       </div>
11267       <div class="body">
11268         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
11269 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
11270 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11271 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
11272 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
11273 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
11274 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
11275
11276 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
11277 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
11278 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
11279 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
11280 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
11281 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
11282 not taken care of by this.</p>
11283
11284 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
11285 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
11286 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
11287 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
11288 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
11289 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
11290 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
11291 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
11292 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
11293 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
11294 firmware packages.</p>
11295
11296 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
11297 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
11298 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
11299 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
11300 initrd with extra firmware, the
11301 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
11302 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
11303 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
11304
11305 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
11306 network cards working.  For this,
11307 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
11308 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
11309 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
11310
11311 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
11312 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
11313 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
11314
11315 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
11316 try.</p>
11317
11318       </div>
11319       <div class="tags">
11320
11321
11322         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11323
11324
11325       </div>
11326     </div>
11327     <div class="padding"></div>
11328
11329     <div class="entry">
11330       <div class="title">
11331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
11332       </div>
11333       <div class="date">
11334         25th January 2012
11335       </div>
11336       <div class="body">
11337         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
11338 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
11339 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
11340 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
11341 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
11342
11343 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
11344 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
11345 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
11346 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
11347 this is done, log on to the central server and run
11348 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
11349 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
11350 will look similar to this:</p>
11351
11352 <p><blockquote><pre>
11353 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
11354 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
11355 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
11356
11357 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
11358
11359 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11360 enter password: *******
11361 %
11362 </pre></blockquote></p>
11363
11364 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
11365 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
11366 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
11367 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
11368 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
11369 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
11370 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
11371 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
11372 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
11373 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
11374 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
11375 automatically.</p>
11376
11377 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
11378 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
11379
11380 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
11381 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
11382 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
11383
11384       </div>
11385       <div class="tags">
11386
11387
11388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
11389
11390
11391       </div>
11392     </div>
11393     <div class="padding"></div>
11394
11395     <div class="entry">
11396       <div class="title">
11397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
11398       </div>
11399       <div class="date">
11400         10th January 2012
11401       </div>
11402       <div class="body">
11403         <p>In the Squeeze version of
11404 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
11405 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
11406 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
11407 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
11408 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
11409 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
11410 first time.</p>
11411
11412 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
11413 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
11414 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
11415 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
11416
11417 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
11418 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
11419 new setting.</p>
11420
11421 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
11422 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
11423 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
11424
11425       </div>
11426       <div class="tags">
11427
11428
11429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11430
11431
11432       </div>
11433     </div>
11434     <div class="padding"></div>
11435
11436     <div class="entry">
11437       <div class="title">
11438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11439       </div>
11440       <div class="date">
11441          7th January 2012
11442       </div>
11443       <div class="body">
11444         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
11445 the second beta version of
11446 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
11447 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
11448 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
11449 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
11450 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11451 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
11452 on the project announcement list.</p>
11453
11454       </div>
11455       <div class="tags">
11456
11457
11458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11459
11460
11461       </div>
11462     </div>
11463     <div class="padding"></div>
11464
11465     <div class="entry">
11466       <div class="title">
11467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
11468       </div>
11469       <div class="date">
11470          3rd January 2012
11471       </div>
11472       <div class="body">
11473         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
11474 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
11475 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
11476 interesting.</p>
11477
11478 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
11479 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
11480 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
11481 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
11482 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
11483 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
11484 wrap up its tasks.</p>
11485
11486 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
11487 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
11488 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
11489 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
11490 because I was typing.</P>
11491
11492 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
11493 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
11494 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
11495 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
11496 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
11497 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
11498 generate entropy.</p>
11499
11500 <p>The fix is in
11501 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
11502 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
11503 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
11504 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
11505
11506       </div>
11507       <div class="tags">
11508
11509
11510         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11511
11512
11513       </div>
11514     </div>
11515     <div class="padding"></div>
11516
11517     <div class="entry">
11518       <div class="title">
11519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
11520       </div>
11521       <div class="date">
11522         21st November 2011
11523       </div>
11524       <div class="body">
11525         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
11526 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
11527 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11528 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
11529 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11530 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11531 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11532 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11533 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11534 the tools to do so.</p>
11535
11536 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11537 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
11538 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11539 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
11540
11541 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11542 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
11543 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11544 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11545 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11546 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11547 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11548 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
11549
11550 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11551 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11552 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
11553
11554 <p><pre>
11555 #!/usr/bin/perl
11556 use strict;
11557 use warnings;
11558 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11559 BEGIN {
11560     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11561     my %rhelmodules = (
11562         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
11563         );
11564     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11565         eval "use $module;";
11566         if ($@) {
11567             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11568             system("yum install -y $pkg");
11569             eval "use $module;";
11570         }
11571     }
11572 }
11573 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
11574
11575 upgrade_dell();
11576
11577 exit 0;
11578
11579 sub run_firmware_script {
11580     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11581     unless ($script) {
11582         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
11583         exit 1
11584     }
11585     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
11586
11587     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11588         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
11589     } else {
11590         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
11591     }
11592 }
11593
11594 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11595     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11596     # Run firmware packages
11597     for my $dir (@dirs) {
11598         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
11599         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
11600         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11601             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11602             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
11603         }
11604         closedir $dh;
11605     }
11606 }
11607
11608 sub download {
11609     my $url = shift;
11610     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
11611     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
11612 }
11613
11614 sub upgrade_dell {
11615     my @dirs;
11616     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11617     chomp $product;
11618
11619     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
11620
11621         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
11622         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
11623
11624         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
11625             CLEANUP => 1
11626             );
11627         chdir($tmpdir);
11628         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
11629         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
11630         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
11631         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
11632         my $fwopts = "-q";
11633         if (@paths) {
11634             for my $url (@paths) {
11635                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
11636             }
11637             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
11638         } else {
11639             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11640             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11641         }
11642         chdir('/');
11643     } else {
11644         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
11645         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
11646     }
11647 }
11648
11649 sub fetch_dell_fw {
11650     my $path = shift;
11651     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
11652     download($url);
11653 }
11654
11655 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
11656 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
11657 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
11658 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
11659     my $filename = shift;
11660
11661     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11662     chomp $product;
11663     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
11664
11665     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
11666
11667     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
11668     my @paths;
11669     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
11670         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
11671         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
11672         my $oscode;
11673         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
11674             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
11675         } else {
11676             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
11677         }
11678         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
11679         {
11680             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
11681         }
11682     }
11683     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
11684         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
11685
11686         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
11687         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
11688
11689         my $cpath = $component->{path};
11690         for my $path (@paths) {
11691             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
11692                 push(@paths, $cpath);
11693             }
11694         }
11695     }
11696     return @paths;
11697 }
11698 </pre>
11699
11700 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
11701 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
11702 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
11703 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
11704 outdated.</p>
11705
11706       </div>
11707       <div class="tags">
11708
11709
11710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11711
11712
11713       </div>
11714     </div>
11715     <div class="padding"></div>
11716
11717     <div class="entry">
11718       <div class="title">
11719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
11720       </div>
11721       <div class="date">
11722          7th October 2011
11723       </div>
11724       <div class="body">
11725         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
11726 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
11727 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
11728 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
11729 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
11730 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
11731 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
11732 models.</p>
11733
11734 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
11735 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
11736 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
11737 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
11738
11739 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
11740 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
11741 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
11742 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
11743 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
11744 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
11745 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
11746 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
11747 distributed.</p>
11748
11749 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
11750
11751 <ul>
11752
11753 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
11754   other relevant equipment.</li>
11755
11756 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
11757
11758 </ul>
11759
11760 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
11761 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
11762 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
11763 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
11764 books available.</p>
11765
11766 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
11767 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
11768 libraries. :)</p>
11769
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="tags">
11772
11773
11774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
11775
11776
11777       </div>
11778     </div>
11779     <div class="padding"></div>
11780
11781     <div class="entry">
11782       <div class="title">
11783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
11784       </div>
11785       <div class="date">
11786         17th September 2011
11787       </div>
11788       <div class="body">
11789         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
11790 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
11791 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
11792 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
11793 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
11794 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
11795 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
11796 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
11797
11798 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
11799
11800 <blockquote><pre>
11801 #!/bin/sh
11802 # apt-get install lsdvd
11803 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11804 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
11805 </pre></blockquote>
11806
11807 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
11808 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
11809 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
11810 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
11811
11812 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
11813 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
11814 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
11815 back as an ISO.
11816
11817 <blockquote><pre>
11818 #!/bin/sh
11819 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
11820 set -e
11821 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
11822 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11823 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
11824 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
11825 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
11826 </pre></blockquote>
11827
11828 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
11829
11830 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
11831 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
11832 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
11833 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
11834 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
11835
11836 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
11837 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
11838 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
11839 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
11840 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
11841 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
11842
11843       </div>
11844       <div class="tags">
11845
11846
11847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11848
11849
11850       </div>
11851     </div>
11852     <div class="padding"></div>
11853
11854     <div class="entry">
11855       <div class="title">
11856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
11857       </div>
11858       <div class="date">
11859          4th August 2011
11860       </div>
11861       <div class="body">
11862         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
11863 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
11864 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
11865 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
11866 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
11867 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
11868 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
11869 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
11870 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
11871
11872 <p><blockquote>
11873 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
11874 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
11875 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
11876 </blockquote></p>
11877
11878 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
11879 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
11880 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
11881 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
11882 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
11883 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
11884 hard to explain.</p>
11885
11886 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
11887 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
11888 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
11889 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
11890 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
11891 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
11892 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
11893 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
11894 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
11895 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
11896 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
11897 mode).</p>
11898
11899 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
11900 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
11901 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
11902 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
11903 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
11904 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
11905 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
11906 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
11907 after visiting single user mode.</p>
11908
11909 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
11910 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
11911 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
11912 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
11913 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
11914 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
11915 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
11916 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
11917
11918 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
11919 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
11920 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
11921
11922       </div>
11923       <div class="tags">
11924
11925
11926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11927
11928
11929       </div>
11930     </div>
11931     <div class="padding"></div>
11932
11933     <div class="entry">
11934       <div class="title">
11935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
11936       </div>
11937       <div class="date">
11938         30th July 2011
11939       </div>
11940       <div class="body">
11941         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
11942 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
11943 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
11944 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
11945 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
11946 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
11947 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
11948 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
11949 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
11950 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
11951 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
11952 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
11953 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
11954
11955 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
11956 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
11957 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
11958 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
11959 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
11960 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
11961 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
11962 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
11963 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
11964
11965 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
11966 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
11967 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
11968 is presented.</p>
11969
11970 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
11971 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
11972 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
11973 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
11974 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
11975 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
11976 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
11977 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
11978 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
11979 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
11980 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
11981 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
11982 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
11983 find time to push this forward.</p>
11984
11985       </div>
11986       <div class="tags">
11987
11988
11989         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11990
11991
11992       </div>
11993     </div>
11994     <div class="padding"></div>
11995
11996     <div class="entry">
11997       <div class="title">
11998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
11999       </div>
12000       <div class="date">
12001         29th July 2011
12002       </div>
12003       <div class="body">
12004         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
12005 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
12006 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
12007 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
12008 issues.</p>
12009
12010 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
12011 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
12012 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
12013
12014 <ol>
12015
12016 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
12017 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
12018 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
12019 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
12020 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
12021 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
12022 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
12023 Debian.</li>
12024
12025 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
12026 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
12027 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
12028 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
12029 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
12030 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
12031 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
12032 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
12033 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
12034 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
12035 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
12036 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
12037 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
12038
12039 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
12040 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
12041 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
12042 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
12043 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
12044 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
12045 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
12046 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
12047 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
12048 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
12049
12050 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
12051 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
12052 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
12053 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
12054 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
12055 latter behaviour.</li>
12056
12057 </ol>
12058
12059 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
12060 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
12061 it do not matter much.</p>
12062
12063 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
12064 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
12065 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
12066
12067       </div>
12068       <div class="tags">
12069
12070
12071         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12072
12073
12074       </div>
12075     </div>
12076     <div class="padding"></div>
12077
12078     <div class="entry">
12079       <div class="title">
12080         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
12081       </div>
12082       <div class="date">
12083         26th July 2011
12084       </div>
12085       <div class="body">
12086         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
12087 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
12088 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
12089 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
12090 security support for a few years.</p>
12091
12092 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
12093 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
12094 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
12095 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
12096 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
12097 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
12098 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
12099 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
12100 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
12101 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
12102 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
12103 easier in the future.</p>
12104
12105 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
12106 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
12107 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
12108 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
12109 do not have time for.</p>
12110
12111       </div>
12112       <div class="tags">
12113
12114
12115         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
12116
12117
12118       </div>
12119     </div>
12120     <div class="padding"></div>
12121
12122     <div class="entry">
12123       <div class="title">
12124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
12125       </div>
12126       <div class="date">
12127         20th June 2011
12128       </div>
12129       <div class="body">
12130         <p>Reading
12131 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
12132 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
12133 parts of the
12134 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
12135 and
12136 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
12137 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
12138 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
12139 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
12140
12141       </div>
12142       <div class="tags">
12143
12144
12145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12146
12147
12148       </div>
12149     </div>
12150     <div class="padding"></div>
12151
12152     <div class="entry">
12153       <div class="title">
12154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
12155       </div>
12156       <div class="date">
12157         30th April 2011
12158       </div>
12159       <div class="body">
12160         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
12161 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
12162 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
12163 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
12164 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
12165 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
12166 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
12167 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
12168 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
12169 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
12170
12171 <p>Where is it?  Visit
12172 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
12173 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
12174 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
12175 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
12176
12177       </div>
12178       <div class="tags">
12179
12180
12181         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
12182
12183
12184       </div>
12185     </div>
12186     <div class="padding"></div>
12187
12188     <div class="entry">
12189       <div class="title">
12190         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
12191       </div>
12192       <div class="date">
12193         29th April 2011
12194       </div>
12195       <div class="body">
12196         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
12197 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
12198 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
12199 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
12200 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
12201 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
12202 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
12203 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
12204 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
12205 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
12206 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
12207 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
12208 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
12209
12210 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
12211 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
12212 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
12213 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
12214 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
12215 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
12216 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
12217 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
12218 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
12219 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
12220 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
12221 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
12222 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
12223
12224 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
12225 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
12226 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
12227 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
12228 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
12229 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
12230 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
12231 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
12232 it.</p>
12233
12234 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
12235 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
12236 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
12237 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
12238 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
12239 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
12240 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
12241
12242 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
12243 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
12244 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
12245 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
12246 and range= options.</p>
12247
12248 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
12249 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
12250 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
12251 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
12252 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
12253 to best handle this.  I've noticed
12254 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
12255 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
12256 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
12257 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
12258
12259 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
12260 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
12261 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
12262 discussions instead of only
12263 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
12264 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
12265 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
12266 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
12267 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
12268 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
12269
12270       </div>
12271       <div class="tags">
12272
12273
12274         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
12275
12276
12277       </div>
12278     </div>
12279     <div class="padding"></div>
12280
12281     <div class="entry">
12282       <div class="title">
12283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
12284       </div>
12285       <div class="date">
12286          6th April 2011
12287       </div>
12288       <div class="body">
12289         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
12290 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
12291 A few days ago the project
12292 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
12293 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
12294 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
12295 into Gnash.</p>
12296
12297       </div>
12298       <div class="tags">
12299
12300
12301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12302
12303
12304       </div>
12305     </div>
12306     <div class="padding"></div>
12307
12308     <div class="entry">
12309       <div class="title">
12310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
12311       </div>
12312       <div class="date">
12313          3rd April 2011
12314       </div>
12315       <div class="body">
12316         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
12317 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
12318 update in English.</p>
12319
12320 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
12321 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
12322 of the British service
12323 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
12324 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
12325 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
12326 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
12327 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
12328 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
12329 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
12330 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
12331 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
12332 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
12333 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
12334 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
12335 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
12336
12337 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12338 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12339 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12340 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12341 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12342 public infrastructure.</p>
12343
12344 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12345 such service?</p>
12346
12347       </div>
12348       <div class="tags">
12349
12350
12351         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
12352
12353
12354       </div>
12355     </div>
12356     <div class="padding"></div>
12357
12358     <div class="entry">
12359       <div class="title">
12360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
12361       </div>
12362       <div class="date">
12363         28th January 2011
12364       </div>
12365       <div class="body">
12366         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12367 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12368 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12369 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12370 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12371 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12372 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12373 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12374 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12375 out which security holes were present in our free software
12376 collection.</p>
12377
12378 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12379 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12380 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12381 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12382 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12383 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12384 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12385 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
12386 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12387 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12388 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
12389 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
12390 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12391 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12392 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
12393 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
12394
12395 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12396 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12397 check out, one could look up
12398 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
12399 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12400 The most recent one is
12401 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
12402 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12403 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
12404
12405 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12406 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
12407 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12408 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12409 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12410 security issues out.</p>
12411
12412 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12413 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12414 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12415 RHEL is providing
12416 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12417 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12418 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12419
12420 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12421 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12422 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12423 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12424 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12425 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12426 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12427 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12428 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12429 established soon.</p>
12430
12431 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12432 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12433 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12434 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12435 for their packages.</p>
12436
12437       </div>
12438       <div class="tags">
12439
12440
12441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
12442
12443
12444       </div>
12445     </div>
12446     <div class="padding"></div>
12447
12448     <div class="entry">
12449       <div class="title">
12450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
12451       </div>
12452       <div class="date">
12453         23rd January 2011
12454       </div>
12455       <div class="body">
12456         <p>In the
12457 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12458 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12459 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12460 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12461 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12462 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12463 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12464 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12465 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12466 one of my machines like this:</p>
12467
12468 <pre>
12469 loaded modules:
12470 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12471 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12472 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12473 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12474 10de:03ec pata_amd
12475 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12476 1022:1103 k8temp
12477 109e:036e bttv
12478 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12479 11ab:4364 sky2
12480 </pre>
12481
12482 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12483 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12484
12485 <pre>
12486 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12487     echo loaded pci modules:
12488     (
12489         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12490         for address in * ; do
12491             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12492                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12493                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12494                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12495                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12496                     echo "$id $module"
12497                 fi
12498             fi
12499         done
12500     )
12501     echo
12502 fi
12503 </pre>
12504
12505 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12506 mappings:</p>
12507
12508 <pre>
12509 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12510     echo loaded usb modules:
12511     (
12512         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12513         for address in * ; do
12514             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12515                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12516                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12517                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12518                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
12519                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
12520                         echo "$id $module"
12521                     fi
12522                 fi
12523             fi
12524         done
12525     )
12526     echo
12527 fi
12528 </pre>
12529
12530 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12531 well.</p>
12532
12533       </div>
12534       <div class="tags">
12535
12536
12537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12538
12539
12540       </div>
12541     </div>
12542     <div class="padding"></div>
12543
12544     <div class="entry">
12545       <div class="title">
12546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
12547       </div>
12548       <div class="date">
12549         16th January 2011
12550       </div>
12551       <div class="body">
12552         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
12553 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
12554 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
12555 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
12556 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
12557 the Wikipedia article on
12558 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
12559 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
12560 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
12561 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
12562 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
12563 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
12564 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
12565 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
12566 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
12567 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
12568 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
12569 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
12570
12571 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
12572 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
12573 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
12574 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
12575 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
12576 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
12577 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
12578 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
12579 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
12580 from last week</a>.</p>
12581
12582 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
12583 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
12584 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
12585 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
12586 was without royalties and license terms, check out
12587 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12588 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
12589
12590 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
12591 available from
12592 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
12593 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
12594 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
12595
12596 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
12597 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
12598 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
12599 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
12600
12601       </div>
12602       <div class="tags">
12603
12604
12605         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12606
12607
12608       </div>
12609     </div>
12610     <div class="padding"></div>
12611
12612     <div class="entry">
12613       <div class="title">
12614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
12615       </div>
12616       <div class="date">
12617         12th January 2011
12618       </div>
12619       <div class="body">
12620         <p>Today I discovered
12621 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
12622 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
12623 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
12624 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
12625 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
12626 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
12627 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
12628 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12629 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
12630 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
12631 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
12632 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
12633 on the Google announcement is available from
12634 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
12635 A good read. :)</p>
12636
12637 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
12638 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
12639 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
12640 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
12641 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
12642 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
12643 browsers support H.264, and others support
12644 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
12645 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
12646 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
12647 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
12648 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
12649 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
12650 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
12651 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
12652
12653 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
12654 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
12655 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
12656 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
12657 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
12658 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
12659 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
12660
12661 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
12662 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
12663 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
12664 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
12665 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
12666 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
12667 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
12668
12669 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
12670 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
12671 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
12672 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
12673 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
12674 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
12675 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
12676
12677 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
12678 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
12679 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
12680 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
12681 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
12682 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
12683 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
12684 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
12685 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
12686 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
12687 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
12688 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
12689 I guess time will tell.</p>
12690
12691 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
12692 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
12693 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
12694
12695       </div>
12696       <div class="tags">
12697
12698
12699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12700
12701
12702       </div>
12703     </div>
12704     <div class="padding"></div>
12705
12706     <div class="entry">
12707       <div class="title">
12708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
12709       </div>
12710       <div class="date">
12711         30th December 2010
12712       </div>
12713       <div class="body">
12714         <p>After trying to
12715 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
12716 Ogg Theora</a> to
12717 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
12718 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
12719 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
12720 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
12721 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
12722 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
12723 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
12724
12725 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
12726 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
12727 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
12728 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
12729 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
12730 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
12731 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
12732
12733 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
12734 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
12735
12736       </div>
12737       <div class="tags">
12738
12739
12740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12741
12742
12743       </div>
12744     </div>
12745     <div class="padding"></div>
12746
12747     <div class="entry">
12748       <div class="title">
12749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
12750       </div>
12751       <div class="date">
12752         27th December 2010
12753       </div>
12754       <div class="body">
12755         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
12756 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
12757 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
12758 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
12759 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
12760 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
12761 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
12762 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
12763
12764 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
12765 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
12766 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
12767 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
12768 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
12769 page</a>.</p>
12770
12771 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
12772 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
12773 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
12774 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
12775 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
12776 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
12777 specification on equal terms.</p>
12778
12779 <blockquote>
12780
12781 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
12782 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
12783 open standard:</p>
12784
12785 <ul>
12786
12787 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12788 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12789 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
12790 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
12791
12792 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12793 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
12794 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
12795 nominal fee.</li>
12796
12797 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
12798 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
12799 free basis.</li>
12800
12801 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12802
12803 </ul>
12804 </blockquote>
12805
12806 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
12807 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
12808 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
12809 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
12810 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
12811 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
12812 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
12813
12814 <blockquote>
12815
12816 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
12817
12818 <ol>
12819
12820 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
12821 tilgængelig.</li>
12822
12823 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
12824 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
12825
12826 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
12827 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
12828
12829 </ol>
12830
12831 </blockquote>
12832
12833 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
12834 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
12835
12836 <blockquote>
12837
12838 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
12839
12840 <ol>
12841
12842 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
12843 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
12844
12845 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
12846 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
12847 Standard themselves;</li>
12848
12849 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
12850 any party or in any business model;</li>
12851
12852 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
12853 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
12854 parties;</li>
12855
12856 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
12857 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
12858 parties.</li>
12859
12860 </ol>
12861
12862 </blockquote>
12863
12864 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
12865 its
12866 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
12867 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
12868
12869 <blockquote>
12870 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
12871
12872 <ul>
12873
12874 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
12875   democratic:
12876
12877          <ul>
12878
12879          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
12880             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
12881             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
12882             and managed.</li>
12883
12884          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
12885             method, can be changed through input from all
12886             participants.</li>
12887
12888          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
12889             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
12890
12891          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
12892             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
12893
12894          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
12895             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
12896             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
12897
12898          </ul>
12899
12900 </li>
12901
12902 </ul>
12903
12904 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
12905 <ul>
12906
12907 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
12908   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
12909   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
12910   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
12911   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
12912
12913 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
12914   a technical or economic barriers</li>
12915
12916 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
12917   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
12918   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
12919   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
12920   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
12921   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
12922   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
12923   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
12924   intended to function.</li>
12925
12926 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
12927   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
12928   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
12929
12930 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
12931   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
12932   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
12933   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
12934   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
12935   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
12936   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
12937   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
12938
12939       <ul>
12940
12941       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
12942         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
12943         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
12944
12945       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
12946         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
12947         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
12948         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
12949
12950       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
12951         licensor</li>
12952
12953       </ul>
12954 </li>
12955
12956 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
12957   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
12958   or restricted licensing terms</li>
12959
12960 </ul>
12961
12962 </blockquote>
12963
12964 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
12965 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
12966 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
12967 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
12968 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
12969 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
12970 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
12971 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
12972 Standards.</p>
12973
12974       </div>
12975       <div class="tags">
12976
12977
12978         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12979
12980
12981       </div>
12982     </div>
12983     <div class="padding"></div>
12984
12985     <div class="entry">
12986       <div class="title">
12987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
12988       </div>
12989       <div class="date">
12990         25th December 2010
12991       </div>
12992       <div class="body">
12993         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
12994 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
12995
12996 <blockquote>
12997
12998 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
12999 as follows:</p>
13000
13001 <ol>
13002
13003 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
13004 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
13005 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
13006
13007 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
13008 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
13009 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
13010 parties.</li>
13011
13012 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
13013 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
13014 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
13015
13016 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
13017 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
13018
13019 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
13020
13021 </ol>
13022
13023 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
13024 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
13025 products based on the standard.</p>
13026 </blockquote>
13027
13028 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
13029 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
13030 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
13031 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
13032 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
13033 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
13034 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
13035 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
13036
13037 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
13038
13039 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
13040 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
13041 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
13042 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
13043 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
13044 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
13045 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
13046 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
13047 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
13048 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
13049 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
13050 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
13051 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
13052 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
13053
13054 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
13055
13056 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
13057 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
13058 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
13059 documentation indicating this.</p>
13060
13061 <p>According to
13062 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
13063 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
13064 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
13065 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
13066 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
13067 report is correct.</p>
13068
13069 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
13070
13071 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
13072 container format</a> and both the
13073 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
13074 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
13075 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
13076
13077 <blockquote>
13078
13079 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
13080 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
13081 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
13082 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
13083 specification compliance.
13084
13085 </blockquote>
13086
13087 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
13088 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
13089 this is the term:<p>
13090
13091 <blockquote>
13092
13093 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
13094 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
13095 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
13096 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
13097 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
13098 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
13099 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
13100 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
13101 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
13102 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
13103 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
13104 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
13105
13106 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
13107 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
13108 </blockquote>
13109
13110 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
13111 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
13112 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
13113 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
13114 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
13115
13116 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
13117
13118 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
13119 Theora format.
13120 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
13121 and
13122 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
13123 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
13124 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
13125 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
13126 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
13127 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
13128 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
13129 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
13130
13131 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
13132
13133 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
13134
13135 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
13136
13137 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
13138 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
13139 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
13140 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
13141 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
13142 this.</p>
13143
13144 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
13145 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
13146
13147       </div>
13148       <div class="tags">
13149
13150
13151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13152
13153
13154       </div>
13155     </div>
13156     <div class="padding"></div>
13157
13158     <div class="entry">
13159       <div class="title">
13160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
13161       </div>
13162       <div class="date">
13163         25th December 2010
13164       </div>
13165       <div class="body">
13166         <p>A few days ago
13167 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
13168 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
13169 2.0 of
13170 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
13171 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
13172 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
13173 Nothing very surprising there, given
13174 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
13175 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
13176 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
13177 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
13178 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
13179 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
13180 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
13181 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
13182 standard definition from its content.</p>
13183
13184 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
13185 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
13186 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
13187 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
13188 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
13189 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
13190 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
13191 background information about that story is available in
13192 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
13193 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
13194
13195 <blockquote>
13196 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
13197 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
13198 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
13199
13200 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
13201
13202 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
13203
13204 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
13205
13206 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
13207
13208 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
13209
13210 <p>
13211 <ul>
13212 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
13213 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
13214 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
13215 </ul>
13216 </p>
13217
13218 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
13219
13220 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
13221
13222 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
13223
13224 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
13225
13226 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
13227
13228
13229 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
13230 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
13231 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
13232 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
13233 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
13234 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
13235
13236 </p>
13237
13238 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
13239
13240 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
13241
13242 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
13243
13244 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
13245
13246 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
13247
13248 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
13249
13250 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
13251
13252 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
13253
13254 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
13255
13256 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
13257
13258 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
13259
13260 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
13261
13262 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
13263
13264 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
13265
13266 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
13267
13268 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
13269
13270 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
13271
13272 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
13273
13274 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
13275
13276 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
13277
13278 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
13279
13280 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
13281
13282 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
13283
13284 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
13285
13286 <p>On security:</p>
13287
13288 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
13289
13290 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
13291
13292 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
13293
13294 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
13295
13296 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
13297
13298 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
13299
13300 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
13301
13302 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
13303
13304 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
13305
13306 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
13307
13308 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
13309
13310 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
13311
13312 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
13313
13314 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
13315
13316 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
13317
13318 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
13319
13320 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
13321
13322 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
13323
13324 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
13325
13326 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
13327
13328 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
13329
13330 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
13331
13332 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
13333
13334 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
13335
13336 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
13337
13338 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
13339
13340 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
13341
13342 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
13343
13344 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
13345
13346 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
13347
13348 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
13349
13350 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
13351
13352 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
13353
13354 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
13355
13356 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
13357
13358 <p>Cordially,<br>
13359 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
13360 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
13361 </blockquote>
13362
13363       </div>
13364       <div class="tags">
13365
13366
13367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13368
13369
13370       </div>
13371     </div>
13372     <div class="padding"></div>
13373
13374     <div class="entry">
13375       <div class="title">
13376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
13377       </div>
13378       <div class="date">
13379         25th December 2010
13380       </div>
13381       <div class="body">
13382         <p>Half a year ago I
13383 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
13384 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
13385 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
13386 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
13387
13388 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
13389 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
13390 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
13391 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
13392 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
13393 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
13394 got such a great test tool available.</p>
13395
13396       </div>
13397       <div class="tags">
13398
13399
13400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13401
13402
13403       </div>
13404     </div>
13405     <div class="padding"></div>
13406
13407     <div class="entry">
13408       <div class="title">
13409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
13410       </div>
13411       <div class="date">
13412         22nd December 2010
13413       </div>
13414       <div class="body">
13415         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13416 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13417 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13418 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13419 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13420 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13421 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13422 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13423 university.</p>
13424
13425 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13426 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13427 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13428 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13429 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13430 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13431 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13432 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13433
13434 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13435 I perform on a new model.</p>
13436
13437 <ul>
13438
13439 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13440 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13441 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13442
13443 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13444 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13445
13446 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13447 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13448 reported by the program.</li>
13449
13450 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13451 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13452 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13453 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13454 normally test this by playing
13455 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13456 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13457
13458 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13459 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13460
13461 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13462 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13463
13464 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13465 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13466
13467 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13468 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13469 few.</li>
13470
13471 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13472 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13473 notice this.</li>
13474
13475 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13476 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13477 resume.</li>
13478
13479 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13480 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13481 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13482 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13483 not.</li>
13484
13485 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13486 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13487 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13488 existence.</li>
13489
13490 </ul>
13491
13492 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13493 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13494 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13495 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13496 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13497 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13498 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13499 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13500
13501       </div>
13502       <div class="tags">
13503
13504
13505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13506
13507
13508       </div>
13509     </div>
13510     <div class="padding"></div>
13511
13512     <div class="entry">
13513       <div class="title">
13514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13515       </div>
13516       <div class="date">
13517         11th December 2010
13518       </div>
13519       <div class="body">
13520         <p>As I continue to explore
13521 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13522 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13523 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13524
13525 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13526 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13527 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13528 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13529 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13530 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13531 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13532 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13533 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13534 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13535 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13536 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13537 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13538 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13539 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13540 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13541 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13542 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13543 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13544 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
13545
13546 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13547 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13548 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13549 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13550 If the Skolelinux foundation
13551 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13552 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13553 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13554 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13555 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13556 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13557 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13558 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
13559
13560 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13561 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13562 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13563 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13564 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13565 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13566 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13567 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13568 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13569 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13570 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13571 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13572 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13573 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13574 currencies.</p>
13575
13576 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13577 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13578 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13579 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13580 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13581 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13582 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13583 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13584 BitCoins.  Check out
13585 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13586 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13587 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13588 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13589 yet.</p>
13590
13591 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13592 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13593 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13594 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13595 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13596
13597       </div>
13598       <div class="tags">
13599
13600
13601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13602
13603
13604       </div>
13605     </div>
13606     <div class="padding"></div>
13607
13608     <div class="entry">
13609       <div class="title">
13610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
13611       </div>
13612       <div class="date">
13613         10th December 2010
13614       </div>
13615       <div class="body">
13616         <p>With this weeks lawless
13617 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13618 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
13619 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13620 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13621 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13622 A blog post from
13623 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13624 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13625 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13626 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
13627 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13628 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13629 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
13630
13631 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13632 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13633 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13634 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13635 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13636 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13637 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13638 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13639 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13640 Debian</a> soon.</p>
13641
13642 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13643 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13644 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13645 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13646 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13647 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13648 you can even get
13649 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
13650 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13651 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
13652 on the current exchange rates.</p>
13653
13654 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13655 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13656 donations to the address
13657 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
13658
13659       </div>
13660       <div class="tags">
13661
13662
13663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13664
13665
13666       </div>
13667     </div>
13668     <div class="padding"></div>
13669
13670     <div class="entry">
13671       <div class="title">
13672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
13673       </div>
13674       <div class="date">
13675          9th December 2010
13676       </div>
13677       <div class="body">
13678         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
13679 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
13680 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
13681 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
13682 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
13683 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
13684 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
13685 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
13686 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
13687 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
13688 operational.</p>
13689
13690 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
13691 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
13692 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
13693 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
13694 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
13695 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
13696 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
13697
13698       </div>
13699       <div class="tags">
13700
13701
13702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
13703
13704
13705       </div>
13706     </div>
13707     <div class="padding"></div>
13708
13709     <div class="entry">
13710       <div class="title">
13711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
13712       </div>
13713       <div class="date">
13714         29th November 2010
13715       </div>
13716       <div class="body">
13717         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13718 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
13719 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
13720 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
13721 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
13722 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13723
13724 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
13725 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
13726 will hold its
13727 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
13728 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
13729 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
13730 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
13731 vote this year.</p>
13732
13733       </div>
13734       <div class="tags">
13735
13736
13737         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13738
13739
13740       </div>
13741     </div>
13742     <div class="padding"></div>
13743
13744     <div class="entry">
13745       <div class="title">
13746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
13747       </div>
13748       <div class="date">
13749         27th November 2010
13750       </div>
13751       <div class="body">
13752         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13753 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13754 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13755 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13756 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13757 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13758 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13759 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
13760
13761 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13762 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13763 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13764 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13765 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13766 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13767 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13768 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13769 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13770 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13771 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
13772
13773 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13774 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13775 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13776 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13777 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13778 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13779 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13780 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13781 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13782 what is going on.</p>
13783
13784       </div>
13785       <div class="tags">
13786
13787
13788         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13789
13790
13791       </div>
13792     </div>
13793     <div class="padding"></div>
13794
13795     <div class="entry">
13796       <div class="title">
13797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
13798       </div>
13799       <div class="date">
13800         22nd November 2010
13801       </div>
13802       <div class="body">
13803         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13804 upgrade testing of the
13805 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13806 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13807 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13808 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13809
13810 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13811
13812 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13813
13814 <blockquote><p>
13815   apache2.2-bin
13816   aptdaemon
13817   baobab
13818   binfmt-support
13819   browser-plugin-gnash
13820   cheese-common
13821   cli-common
13822   cups-pk-helper
13823   dmz-cursor-theme
13824   empathy
13825   empathy-common
13826   freedesktop-sound-theme
13827   freeglut3
13828   gconf-defaults-service
13829   gdm-themes
13830   gedit-plugins
13831   geoclue
13832   geoclue-hostip
13833   geoclue-localnet
13834   geoclue-manual
13835   geoclue-yahoo
13836   gnash
13837   gnash-common
13838   gnome
13839   gnome-backgrounds
13840   gnome-cards-data
13841   gnome-codec-install
13842   gnome-core
13843   gnome-desktop-environment
13844   gnome-disk-utility
13845   gnome-screenshot
13846   gnome-search-tool
13847   gnome-session-canberra
13848   gnome-system-log
13849   gnome-themes-extras
13850   gnome-themes-more
13851   gnome-user-share
13852   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13853   gstreamer0.10-tools
13854   gtk2-engines
13855   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13856   gtk2-engines-smooth
13857   hamster-applet
13858   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13859   libapr1
13860   libaprutil1
13861   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13862   libaprutil1-ldap
13863   libart2.0-cil
13864   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13865   libboost-python1.42.0
13866   libboost-thread1.42.0
13867   libchamplain-0.4-0
13868   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13869   libcheese-gtk18
13870   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13871   libcryptui0
13872   libdiscid0
13873   libelf1
13874   libepc-1.0-2
13875   libepc-common
13876   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13877   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13878   libfreerdp0
13879   libgconf2.0-cil
13880   libgdata-common
13881   libgdata7
13882   libgdu-gtk0
13883   libgee2
13884   libgeoclue0
13885   libgexiv2-0
13886   libgif4
13887   libglade2.0-cil
13888   libglib2.0-cil
13889   libgmime2.4-cil
13890   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13891   libgnome2.24-cil
13892   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13893   libgpod-common
13894   libgpod4
13895   libgtk2.0-cil
13896   libgtkglext1
13897   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13898   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13899   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13900   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13901   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13902   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13903   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13904   libmono-security2.0-cil
13905   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13906   libmono-system2.0-cil
13907   libmtp8
13908   libmusicbrainz3-6
13909   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13910   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13911   libopal3.6.8
13912   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13913   libpt2.6.7
13914   libpython2.6
13915   librpm1
13916   librpmio1
13917   libsdl1.2debian
13918   libsrtp0
13919   libssh-4
13920   libtelepathy-farsight0
13921   libtelepathy-glib0
13922   libtidy-0.99-0
13923   media-player-info
13924   mesa-utils
13925   mono-2.0-gac
13926   mono-gac
13927   mono-runtime
13928   nautilus-sendto
13929   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13930   p7zip-full
13931   pkg-config
13932   python-aptdaemon
13933   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13934   python-axiom
13935   python-beautifulsoup
13936   python-bugbuddy
13937   python-clientform
13938   python-coherence
13939   python-configobj
13940   python-crypto
13941   python-cupshelpers
13942   python-elementtree
13943   python-epsilon
13944   python-evolution
13945   python-feedparser
13946   python-gdata
13947   python-gdbm
13948   python-gst0.10
13949   python-gtkglext1
13950   python-gtksourceview2
13951   python-httplib2
13952   python-louie
13953   python-mako
13954   python-markupsafe
13955   python-mechanize
13956   python-nevow
13957   python-notify
13958   python-opengl
13959   python-openssl
13960   python-pam
13961   python-pkg-resources
13962   python-pyasn1
13963   python-pysqlite2
13964   python-rdflib
13965   python-serial
13966   python-tagpy
13967   python-twisted-bin
13968   python-twisted-conch
13969   python-twisted-core
13970   python-twisted-web
13971   python-utidylib
13972   python-webkit
13973   python-xdg
13974   python-zope.interface
13975   remmina
13976   remmina-plugin-data
13977   remmina-plugin-rdp
13978   remmina-plugin-vnc
13979   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13980   rhythmbox-plugins
13981   rpm-common
13982   rpm2cpio
13983   seahorse-plugins
13984   shotwell
13985   software-center
13986   system-config-printer-udev
13987   telepathy-gabble
13988   telepathy-mission-control-5
13989   telepathy-salut
13990   tomboy
13991   totem
13992   totem-coherence
13993   totem-mozilla
13994   totem-plugins
13995   transmission-common
13996   xdg-user-dirs
13997   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13998   xserver-xephyr
13999 </p></blockquote>
14000
14001 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14002
14003 <blockquote><p>
14004   cheese
14005   ekiga
14006   eog
14007   epiphany-extensions
14008   evolution-exchange
14009   fast-user-switch-applet
14010   file-roller
14011   gcalctool
14012   gconf-editor
14013   gdm
14014   gedit
14015   gedit-common
14016   gnome-games
14017   gnome-games-data
14018   gnome-nettool
14019   gnome-system-tools
14020   gnome-themes
14021   gnuchess
14022   gucharmap
14023   guile-1.8-libs
14024   libavahi-ui0
14025   libdmx1
14026   libgalago3
14027   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14028   libgtksourceview2.0-0
14029   liblircclient0
14030   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
14031   libspeexdsp1
14032   libsvga1
14033   rhythmbox
14034   seahorse
14035   sound-juicer
14036   system-config-printer
14037   totem-common
14038   transmission-gtk
14039   vinagre
14040   vino
14041 </p></blockquote>
14042
14043 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14044
14045 <blockquote><p>
14046   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14047 </p></blockquote>
14048
14049 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14050
14051 <blockquote><p>
14052 [nothing]
14053 </p></blockquote>
14054
14055 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14056
14057 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14058
14059 <blockquote><p>
14060   ksmserver
14061 </p></blockquote>
14062
14063 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14064
14065 <blockquote><p>
14066   kwin
14067   network-manager-kde
14068 </p></blockquote>
14069
14070 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14071
14072 <blockquote><p>
14073   arts
14074   dolphin
14075   freespacenotifier
14076   google-gadgets-gst
14077   google-gadgets-xul
14078   kappfinder
14079   kcalc
14080   kcharselect
14081   kde-core
14082   kde-plasma-desktop
14083   kde-standard
14084   kde-window-manager
14085   kdeartwork
14086   kdeartwork-emoticons
14087   kdeartwork-style
14088   kdeartwork-theme-icon
14089   kdebase
14090   kdebase-apps
14091   kdebase-workspace
14092   kdebase-workspace-bin
14093   kdebase-workspace-data
14094   kdeeject
14095   kdelibs
14096   kdeplasma-addons
14097   kdeutils
14098   kdewallpapers
14099   kdf
14100   kfloppy
14101   kgpg
14102   khelpcenter4
14103   kinfocenter
14104   konq-plugins-l10n
14105   konqueror-nsplugins
14106   kscreensaver
14107   kscreensaver-xsavers
14108   ktimer
14109   kwrite
14110   libgle3
14111   libkde4-ruby1.8
14112   libkonq5
14113   libkonq5-templates
14114   libnetpbm10
14115   libplasma-ruby
14116   libplasma-ruby1.8
14117   libqt4-ruby1.8
14118   marble-data
14119   marble-plugins
14120   netpbm
14121   nuvola-icon-theme
14122   plasma-dataengines-workspace
14123   plasma-desktop
14124   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
14125   plasma-runners-addons
14126   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
14127   plasma-scriptengine-python
14128   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
14129   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
14130   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
14131   plasma-scriptengines
14132   plasma-wallpapers-addons
14133   plasma-widget-folderview
14134   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14135   ruby
14136   sweeper
14137   update-notifier-kde
14138   xscreensaver-data-extra
14139   xscreensaver-gl
14140   xscreensaver-gl-extra
14141   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14142 </p></blockquote>
14143
14144 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14145
14146 <blockquote><p>
14147   ark
14148   google-gadgets-common
14149   google-gadgets-qt
14150   htdig
14151   kate
14152   kdebase-bin
14153   kdebase-data
14154   kdepasswd
14155   kfind
14156   klipper
14157   konq-plugins
14158   konqueror
14159   ksysguard
14160   ksysguardd
14161   libarchive1
14162   libcln6
14163   libeet1
14164   libeina-svn-06
14165   libggadget-1.0-0b
14166   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
14167   libgps19
14168   libkdecorations4
14169   libkephal4
14170   libkonq4
14171   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
14172   libkscreensaver5
14173   libksgrd4
14174   libksignalplotter4
14175   libkunitconversion4
14176   libkwineffects1a
14177   libmarblewidget4
14178   libntrack-qt4-1
14179   libntrack0
14180   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
14181   libplasmaclock4a
14182   libplasmagenericshell4
14183   libprocesscore4a
14184   libprocessui4a
14185   libqalculate5
14186   libqedje0a
14187   libqtruby4shared2
14188   libqzion0a
14189   libruby1.8
14190   libscim8c2a
14191   libsmokekdecore4-3
14192   libsmokekdeui4-3
14193   libsmokekfile3
14194   libsmokekhtml3
14195   libsmokekio3
14196   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
14197   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
14198   libsmokekparts3
14199   libsmokektexteditor3
14200   libsmokekutils3
14201   libsmokenepomuk3
14202   libsmokephonon3
14203   libsmokeplasma3
14204   libsmokeqtcore4-3
14205   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
14206   libsmokeqtgui4-3
14207   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
14208   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
14209   libsmokeqtscript4-3
14210   libsmokeqtsql4-3
14211   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
14212   libsmokeqttest4-3
14213   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
14214   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
14215   libsmokeqtxml4-3
14216   libsmokesolid3
14217   libsmokesoprano3
14218   libtaskmanager4a
14219   libtidy-0.99-0
14220   libweather-ion4a
14221   libxklavier16
14222   libxxf86misc1
14223   okteta
14224   oxygencursors
14225   plasma-dataengines-addons
14226   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
14227   plasma-widget-lancelot
14228   plasma-widgets-addons
14229   plasma-widgets-workspace
14230   polkit-kde-1
14231   ruby1.8
14232   systemsettings
14233   update-notifier-common
14234 </p></blockquote>
14235
14236 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
14237 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
14238 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
14239 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
14240
14241       </div>
14242       <div class="tags">
14243
14244
14245         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14246
14247
14248       </div>
14249     </div>
14250     <div class="padding"></div>
14251
14252     <div class="entry">
14253       <div class="title">
14254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
14255       </div>
14256       <div class="date">
14257         22nd November 2010
14258       </div>
14259       <div class="body">
14260         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
14261 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
14262 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
14263 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
14264 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
14265 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
14266 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
14267 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
14268 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
14269
14270 <p>I found
14271 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
14272 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
14273 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
14274 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
14275 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
14276 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
14277
14278 <pre>
14279 #!/bin/sh
14280
14281 # Based on
14282 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
14283
14284 set -e
14285 set -x
14286
14287 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
14288     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
14289     exit 1
14290 else
14291     host="$1"
14292 fi
14293
14294 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
14295     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
14296     exit 1
14297 fi
14298
14299 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
14300 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14301 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14302 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
14303
14304 img=$host.img
14305 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
14306 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
14307
14308 parted $img mklabel msdos
14309 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
14310 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
14311 parted $img set 1 boot on
14312
14313 modprobe dm-mod
14314 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
14315 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
14316
14317 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
14318 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
14319 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
14320
14321 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
14322 losetup -d /dev/loop0
14323 </pre>
14324
14325 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
14326 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
14327
14328 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
14329 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
14330 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
14331 seem to work just fine.</p>
14332
14333       </div>
14334       <div class="tags">
14335
14336
14337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14338
14339
14340       </div>
14341     </div>
14342     <div class="padding"></div>
14343
14344     <div class="entry">
14345       <div class="title">
14346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
14347       </div>
14348       <div class="date">
14349         20th November 2010
14350       </div>
14351       <div class="body">
14352         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
14353 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14354 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14355 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
14356
14357 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14358 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14359 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
14360
14361 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14362
14363 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14364
14365 <blockquote><p>
14366   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14367   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
14368   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14369   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14370   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14371   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14372   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14373   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14374   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14375   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14376   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14377   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14378   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14379   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14380   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
14381   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
14382   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14383   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
14384   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14385   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14386   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
14387   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14388   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14389   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14390   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14391   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14392   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14393   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14394   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14395   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
14396   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
14397   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14398   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14399   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
14400   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
14401   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14402   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14403   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14404   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
14405   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14406   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14407   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14408   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14409   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14410   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14411   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14412   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14413   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14414   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14415   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14416   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14417   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14418   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14419   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14420   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14421   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14422   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14423   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14424   zip
14425 </p></blockquote>
14426
14427 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14428
14429 <blockquote><p>
14430   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14431   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14432   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14433   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14434   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14435   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14436   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14437   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14438   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14439   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14440   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14441   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14442   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14443   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14444   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14445   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14446   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14447   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14448   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14449   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14450   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14451   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14452   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14453   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14454   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14455   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14456   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14457   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14458   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14459 </p></blockquote>
14460
14461 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14462
14463 <blockquote><p>
14464   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14465 </p></blockquote>
14466
14467 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14468
14469 <blockquote><p>
14470 [nothing]
14471 </p></blockquote>
14472
14473 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14474
14475 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14476
14477 <blockquote><p>
14478   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14479   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14480   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14481   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14482   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14483   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14484   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14485   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14486   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14487   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14488   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14489   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14490   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14491   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14492   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14493   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14494   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14495   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14496   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14497   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14498   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14499   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14500   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14501   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14502   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14503   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14504   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14505   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14506   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14507   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14508 </p></blockquote>
14509
14510 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14511
14512 <blockquote><p>
14513   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14514   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14515   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14516   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14517   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14518   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14519   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14520   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14521   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14522   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14523   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14524   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14525   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14526   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14527   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14528   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14529   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14530   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14531   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14532   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14533   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14534   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14535   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14536   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14537   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14538   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14539   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14540   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14541   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14542   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14543   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14544   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14545   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14546 </p></blockquote>
14547
14548 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14549
14550 <blockquote><p>
14551   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14552   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14553   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14554   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14555   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14556   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14557   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14558 </p></blockquote>
14559
14560 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14561
14562 <blockquote><p>
14563   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14564 </p></blockquote>
14565
14566       </div>
14567       <div class="tags">
14568
14569
14570         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14571
14572
14573       </div>
14574     </div>
14575     <div class="padding"></div>
14576
14577     <div class="entry">
14578       <div class="title">
14579         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14580       </div>
14581       <div class="date">
14582         20th November 2010
14583       </div>
14584       <div class="body">
14585         <p>Answering
14586 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14587 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14588 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14589 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14590 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14591 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14592 releases out more often.</p>
14593
14594 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14595 I have considered setting up a <a
14596 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14597 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14598 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14599 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14600 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14601 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14602 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14603 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14604 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14605 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14606 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14607 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14608
14609       </div>
14610       <div class="tags">
14611
14612
14613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14614
14615
14616       </div>
14617     </div>
14618     <div class="padding"></div>
14619
14620     <div class="entry">
14621       <div class="title">
14622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
14623       </div>
14624       <div class="date">
14625          9th November 2010
14626       </div>
14627       <div class="body">
14628         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
14629
14630 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
14631 3D linked in from
14632 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
14633 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
14634
14635       </div>
14636       <div class="tags">
14637
14638
14639         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14640
14641
14642       </div>
14643     </div>
14644     <div class="padding"></div>
14645
14646     <div class="entry">
14647       <div class="title">
14648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
14649       </div>
14650       <div class="date">
14651          7th November 2010
14652       </div>
14653       <div class="body">
14654         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
14655 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
14656 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
14657 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
14658 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
14659 working using this DVD.</p>
14660
14661 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
14662 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
14663 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
14664 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
14665 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
14666 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
14667 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
14668
14669 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
14670 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
14671 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
14672 Debian archive.</p>
14673
14674 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
14675 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
14676 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
14677 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
14678 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
14679 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
14680 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
14681 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
14682 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
14683 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
14684 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
14685 free X driver should work.</p>
14686
14687 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
14688 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
14689 DVD more useful again.</p>
14690
14691       </div>
14692       <div class="tags">
14693
14694
14695         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14696
14697
14698       </div>
14699     </div>
14700     <div class="padding"></div>
14701
14702     <div class="entry">
14703       <div class="title">
14704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
14705       </div>
14706       <div class="date">
14707         24th October 2010
14708       </div>
14709       <div class="body">
14710         <p>Some updates.</p>
14711
14712 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
14713 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14714 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14715 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14716 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14717 :)</p>
14718
14719 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14720 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14721 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14722 It is called
14723 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
14724 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
14725 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14726 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14727 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14728 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
14729
14730 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
14731 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14732 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
14733 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14734 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
14735 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14736 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14737 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14738 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14739 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
14740
14741       </div>
14742       <div class="tags">
14743
14744
14745         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
14746
14747
14748       </div>
14749     </div>
14750     <div class="padding"></div>
14751
14752     <div class="entry">
14753       <div class="title">
14754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
14755       </div>
14756       <div class="date">
14757         19th October 2010
14758       </div>
14759       <div class="body">
14760         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
14761 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
14762 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
14763 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
14764 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
14765 AVM2 flash files.</p>
14766
14767 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
14768 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
14769 following text:</P>
14770
14771 <p><blockquote>
14772
14773   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
14774   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
14775
14776   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
14777
14778   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
14779
14780   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
14781   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
14782   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
14783   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
14784   days. The project web page is available from
14785   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
14786   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
14787   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
14788
14789   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
14790   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
14791   to get this to happen.</p>
14792
14793   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
14794   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
14795
14796 </blockquote></p>
14797
14798 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
14799 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
14800 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
14801 :)</p>
14802
14803       </div>
14804       <div class="tags">
14805
14806
14807         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14808
14809
14810       </div>
14811     </div>
14812     <div class="padding"></div>
14813
14814     <div class="entry">
14815       <div class="title">
14816         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
14817       </div>
14818       <div class="date">
14819          9th October 2010
14820       </div>
14821       <div class="body">
14822         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
14823 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
14824 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
14825 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
14826 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
14827 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
14828 robots.</p>
14829
14830 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
14831 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
14832 a few less important features too.</p>
14833
14834 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
14835 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
14836 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
14837 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
14838
14839 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
14840 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
14841 source or binary package:</p>
14842
14843 <p><ul>
14844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
14845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
14846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
14847 </ul></p>
14848
14849 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
14850 please let me know.</p>
14851
14852       </div>
14853       <div class="tags">
14854
14855
14856         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
14857
14858
14859       </div>
14860     </div>
14861     <div class="padding"></div>
14862
14863     <div class="entry">
14864       <div class="title">
14865         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
14866       </div>
14867       <div class="date">
14868          3rd October 2010
14869       </div>
14870       <div class="body">
14871         <p><ul>
14872
14873 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
14874 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
14875
14876 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
14877 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
14878 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
14879
14880 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
14881 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
14882 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
14883 simple setup.
14884
14885 </ul></p>
14886
14887       </div>
14888       <div class="tags">
14889
14890
14891         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14892
14893
14894       </div>
14895     </div>
14896     <div class="padding"></div>
14897
14898     <div class="entry">
14899       <div class="title">
14900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
14901       </div>
14902       <div class="date">
14903          9th September 2010
14904       </div>
14905       <div class="body">
14906         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
14907 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
14908 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
14909 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
14910 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
14911 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
14912 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
14913 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
14914 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
14915
14916 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
14917 written:</p>
14918
14919 <blockquote>
14920 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
14921 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
14922 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
14923 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
14924 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
14925
14926 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
14927 standard.</p>
14928 </blockquote>
14929
14930 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
14931 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
14932 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
14933 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
14934
14935 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
14936 read
14937 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
14938 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
14939 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
14940 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
14941 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
14942 the issue.  The solution is to support the
14943 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
14944 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
14945 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
14946
14947       </div>
14948       <div class="tags">
14949
14950
14951         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14952
14953
14954       </div>
14955     </div>
14956     <div class="padding"></div>
14957
14958     <div class="entry">
14959       <div class="title">
14960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
14961       </div>
14962       <div class="date">
14963          4th September 2010
14964       </div>
14965       <div class="body">
14966         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14967 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14968 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14969 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14970 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14971 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14972 installed.</p>
14973
14974 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14975 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14976 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14977 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14978 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14979 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14980 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14981 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14982 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14983
14984 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14985 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14986 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14987 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14988 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14989 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14990 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14991 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14992 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14993 pages they want to visit.</p>
14994
14995 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14996 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14997 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14998 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14999 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
15000 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
15001 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
15002 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
15003 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
15004 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
15005 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
15006
15007       </div>
15008       <div class="tags">
15009
15010
15011         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15012
15013
15014       </div>
15015     </div>
15016     <div class="padding"></div>
15017
15018     <div class="entry">
15019       <div class="title">
15020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
15021       </div>
15022       <div class="date">
15023          1st September 2010
15024       </div>
15025       <div class="body">
15026         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
15027 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
15028 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
15029 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
15030 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
15031 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
15032 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
15033 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
15034 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
15035 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
15036 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
15037 drive around.</p>
15038
15039 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
15040 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
15041
15042 <p><pre>
15043 use Spykee;
15044 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
15045 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
15046 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
15047 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
15048 $spykee->left();
15049 sleep 2;
15050 $spykee->right();
15051 sleep 2;
15052 $spykee->forward();
15053 sleep 2;
15054 $spykee->back();
15055 sleep 2;
15056 $spykee->stop();
15057 </pre></p>
15058
15059 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
15060 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
15061 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
15062 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
15063 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
15064 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
15065 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
15066 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
15067 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
15068 going. :).</p>
15069
15070 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
15071 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
15072 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
15073 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
15074
15075       </div>
15076       <div class="tags">
15077
15078
15079         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
15080
15081
15082       </div>
15083     </div>
15084     <div class="padding"></div>
15085
15086     <div class="entry">
15087       <div class="title">
15088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
15089       </div>
15090       <div class="date">
15091         30th August 2010
15092       </div>
15093       <div class="body">
15094         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
15095 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
15096 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
15097 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
15098 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
15099 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
15100 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
15101
15102 <pre>
15103 % ln foo bar
15104 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
15105 %
15106 </pre>
15107
15108 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
15109 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
15110 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
15111 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
15112 nevertheless. :)</p>
15113
15114 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
15115 git from
15116 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
15117
15118       </div>
15119       <div class="tags">
15120
15121
15122         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15123
15124
15125       </div>
15126     </div>
15127     <div class="padding"></div>
15128
15129     <div class="entry">
15130       <div class="title">
15131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
15132       </div>
15133       <div class="date">
15134         26th August 2010
15135       </div>
15136       <div class="body">
15137         <p>My file system sematics program
15138 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
15139 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
15140 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
15141 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
15142 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
15143 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
15144 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
15145 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
15146 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
15147 script:</p>
15148
15149 <pre>
15150 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
15151   mode_t retval = 0;
15152   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
15153   if (-1 != fd) {
15154     unlink(name);
15155     struct stat statbuf;
15156     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
15157       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
15158     }
15159     close(fd);
15160   }
15161   return retval;
15162 }
15163
15164 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
15165 int test_umask(void) {
15166   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
15167
15168   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
15169   mode_t newmode;
15170   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
15171     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
15172            newmode);
15173   }
15174   umask(007);
15175   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
15176     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
15177            newmode);
15178   }
15179
15180   umask (orig_umask);
15181   return 0;
15182 }
15183
15184 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15185   [...]
15186   test_umask();
15187   return 0;
15188 }
15189 </pre>
15190
15191 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
15192
15193 <pre>
15194 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15195 info: testing symlink creation
15196 info: testing subdirectory creation
15197 info: testing fcntl locking
15198   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15199   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15200   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15201   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15202   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15203   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15204 info: testing umask effect on file creation
15205 </pre>
15206
15207 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
15208 result:</p>
15209
15210 <pre>
15211 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15212 info: testing symlink creation
15213 info: testing subdirectory creation
15214 info: testing fcntl locking
15215   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15216   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15217   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15218   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15219   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15220   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15221 info: testing umask effect on file creation
15222   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
15223   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
15224 </pre>
15225
15226 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
15227 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
15228 directory.</p>
15229
15230 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
15231 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
15232
15233 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15234 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15235 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
15236
15237       </div>
15238       <div class="tags">
15239
15240
15241         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15242
15243
15244       </div>
15245     </div>
15246     <div class="padding"></div>
15247
15248     <div class="entry">
15249       <div class="title">
15250         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
15251       </div>
15252       <div class="date">
15253         15th August 2010
15254       </div>
15255       <div class="body">
15256         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
15257 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
15258 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
15259 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
15260 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
15261 long time.</p>
15262
15263       </div>
15264       <div class="tags">
15265
15266
15267         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
15268
15269
15270       </div>
15271     </div>
15272     <div class="padding"></div>
15273
15274     <div class="entry">
15275       <div class="title">
15276         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
15277       </div>
15278       <div class="date">
15279          9th August 2010
15280       </div>
15281       <div class="body">
15282         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
15283 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
15284 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
15285 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
15286 generated configuration.</p>
15287
15288 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
15289 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
15290 without any manual configuration.</p>
15291
15292 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
15293 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
15294 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
15295 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
15296 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
15297 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
15298 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
15299 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
15300 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
15301 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
15302 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
15303 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
15304 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
15305 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
15306 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
15307 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
15308 use.</p>
15309
15310 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
15311 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
15312 working properly out of the box:</p>
15313
15314 <ul>
15315 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
15316 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
15317 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
15318 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
15319 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
15320 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
15321 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
15322 </ul>
15323
15324 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
15325
15326 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
15327 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
15328 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
15329 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
15330 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
15331
15332 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
15333 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
15334 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
15335 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
15336 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
15337 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
15338 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
15339 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
15340
15341 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
15342 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
15343 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
15344 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
15345 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
15346 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
15347 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
15348 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
15349 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
15350 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
15351 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
15352 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15353 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
15354 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
15355 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
15356 current DNS domain is used.</p>
15357
15358 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
15359 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
15360 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
15361 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
15362 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
15363 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
15364 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
15365 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
15366 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
15367 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
15368 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
15369 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
15370 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
15371
15372 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
15373 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
15374 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
15375 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
15376 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
15377 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
15378 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
15379 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
15380 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
15381 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
15382 do for now. :)</p>
15383
15384 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
15385 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
15386 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
15387 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
15388 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
15389 yet.</p>
15390
15391 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15392 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15393
15394 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
15395 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
15396 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
15397 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
15398
15399       </div>
15400       <div class="tags">
15401
15402
15403         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15404
15405
15406       </div>
15407     </div>
15408     <div class="padding"></div>
15409
15410     <div class="entry">
15411       <div class="title">
15412         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
15413       </div>
15414       <div class="date">
15415          8th August 2010
15416       </div>
15417       <div class="body">
15418         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
15419 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
15420 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
15421 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
15422 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
15423 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
15424 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
15425
15426 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
15427 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
15428 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
15429 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
15430 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
15431 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
15432 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
15433
15434 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
15435 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
15436 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
15437 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
15438 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
15439
15440 <pre>
15441 /*
15442  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
15443  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
15444  * directory.
15445  * License: GPL v2 or later
15446  *
15447  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
15448  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
15449 */
15450
15451 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
15452 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
15453 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
15454
15455 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
15456
15457 #include &lt;errno.h>
15458 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
15459 #include &lt;stdio.h>
15460 #include &lt;string.h>
15461 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
15462 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
15463 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
15464 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
15465 #include &lt;unistd.h>
15466
15467 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15468 /*
15469  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
15470  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
15471  * below.
15472  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
15473  */
15474 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
15475 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
15476   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
15477 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
15478   char *zErrMsg;
15479   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15480   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
15481   unlink(name);
15482   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
15483   if( rc ){
15484     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
15485     sqlite3_close(db);
15486     return -1;
15487   }
15488
15489   /* create tables */
15490   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
15491   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
15492     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
15493     sqlite3_close(db);
15494     return -1;
15495   }
15496   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
15497   sqlite3_close(db);
15498   return 0;
15499 }
15500 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15501
15502 /*
15503  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
15504  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
15505  * done in the sqlite3 library.
15506  * See also
15507  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
15508  * POSIX specification
15509  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
15510  */
15511 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
15512   struct flock fl;
15513   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15514   unlink(name);
15515   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
15516   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
15517
15518   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
15519   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
15520   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15521   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15522   fl.l_len    = 1;
15523   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15524   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15525
15526   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15527   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15528   fl.l_len    = 510;
15529   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15530   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15531
15532   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15533   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15534   fl.l_len    = 1;
15535   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15536   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15537
15538   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15539   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15540   fl.l_len    = 1;
15541   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
15542   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15543
15544   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15545   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15546   fl.l_len    = 510;
15547   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15548
15549   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
15550   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15551   fl.l_len    = 2;
15552   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15553   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15554
15555   close(fd);
15556   return 0;
15557 }
15558
15559 /*
15560  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
15561  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
15562  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
15563  * slowing down file operations.
15564  */
15565 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
15566 #define LEVELS 5
15567   char *path = strdup("test");
15568   char *dirs[LEVELS];
15569   int level;
15570   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
15571   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
15572     char *newpath = NULL;
15573     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
15574       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
15575              path, strerror(errno));
15576       break;
15577     }
15578     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
15579     free(path);
15580     path = newpath;
15581   }
15582   return 0;
15583 }
15584
15585 /*
15586  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
15587  * KDE.
15588  */
15589 int test_symlinks(void) {
15590   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
15591   unlink("symlink");
15592   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
15593     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
15594   return 0;
15595 }
15596
15597 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15598   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
15599   test_symlinks();
15600   test_subdirectory_creation();
15601 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15602   test_sqlite_open();
15603 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15604   test_gcompris_locking();
15605   return 0;
15606 }
15607 </pre>
15608
15609 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
15610 this:</p>
15611
15612 <pre>
15613 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15614 info: testing symlink creation
15615 info: testing subdirectory creation
15616 info: sqlite worked
15617 info: testing fcntl locking
15618   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15619   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15620   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15621   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15622   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15623   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15624 </pre>
15625
15626 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
15627 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
15628 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
15629 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
15630 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
15631 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
15632 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
15633 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
15634
15635 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
15636 it. :)</p>
15637
15638 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15639 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15640 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
15641
15642       </div>
15643       <div class="tags">
15644
15645
15646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15647
15648
15649       </div>
15650     </div>
15651     <div class="padding"></div>
15652
15653     <div class="entry">
15654       <div class="title">
15655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
15656       </div>
15657       <div class="date">
15658          7th August 2010
15659       </div>
15660       <div class="body">
15661         <p>A few days ago, I
15662 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
15663 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
15664 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
15665 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
15666 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
15667 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
15668 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
15669 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
15670 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
15671
15672 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
15673 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
15674 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
15675 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
15676 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
15677 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
15678 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
15679 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
15680 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
15681 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
15682 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
15683 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
15684 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
15685 gave it a IP address.</p>
15686
15687 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
15688 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
15689 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
15690 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
15691 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
15692 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15693 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
15694 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
15695
15696 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
15697 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
15698 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
15699 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
15700 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
15701 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
15702
15703 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
15704 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
15705 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
15706 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
15707 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
15708 with UID and GID values.</p>
15709
15710 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15711 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15712
15713       </div>
15714       <div class="tags">
15715
15716
15717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15718
15719
15720       </div>
15721     </div>
15722     <div class="padding"></div>
15723
15724     <div class="entry">
15725       <div class="title">
15726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
15727       </div>
15728       <div class="date">
15729          3rd August 2010
15730       </div>
15731       <div class="body">
15732         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
15733 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
15734 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
15735 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
15736 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
15737 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
15738 servers.</p>
15739
15740 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
15741 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
15742 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
15743 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
15744 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
15745 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
15746 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
15747 .uio.no.</p>
15748
15749 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
15750 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
15751 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
15752 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
15753 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
15754 university servers.</p>
15755
15756 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
15757 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
15758 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
15759 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
15760 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
15761 uses.</p>
15762
15763       </div>
15764       <div class="tags">
15765
15766
15767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15768
15769
15770       </div>
15771     </div>
15772     <div class="padding"></div>
15773
15774     <div class="entry">
15775       <div class="title">
15776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
15777       </div>
15778       <div class="date">
15779         27th July 2010
15780       </div>
15781       <div class="body">
15782         <p>I discovered this while doing
15783 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
15784 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
15785 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15786 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15787 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
15788
15789 <p>An example is from todays
15790 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
15791 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15792 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15793 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15794 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15795 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15796 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
15797
15798 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
15799
15800 <blockquote><pre>
15801 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15802  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
15803   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15804 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15805  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15806 </pre></blockquote>
15807
15808 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15809 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
15810 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15811 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15812 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15813 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15814 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15815 of dependency loops.</p>
15816
15817 <p>Thanks to
15818 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
15819 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
15820 dependencies
15821 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
15822 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
15823
15824 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15825 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
15826 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
15827 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15828 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15829 it.</p>
15830
15831       </div>
15832       <div class="tags">
15833
15834
15835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15836
15837
15838       </div>
15839     </div>
15840     <div class="padding"></div>
15841
15842     <div class="entry">
15843       <div class="title">
15844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
15845       </div>
15846       <div class="date">
15847         27th July 2010
15848       </div>
15849       <div class="body">
15850         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
15851 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
15852 completed.</p>
15853
15854 <blockquote>
15855 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
15856 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
15857 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
15858 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
15859 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
15860 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
15861 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
15862 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
15863
15864 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
15865 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
15866 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
15867
15868 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
15869 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
15870 much.</p>
15871
15872 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
15873
15874 <ul>
15875 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
15876 <ul>
15877   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
15878          combination with some new artwork
15879   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
15880   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
15881   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
15882   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
15883   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
15884   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
15885   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
15886   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
15887   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
15888 </ul></li>
15889 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
15890     Enabled for:
15891 <ul>
15892   <li>PAM
15893   <li>LDAP
15894   <li>IMAP
15895   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
15896 </ul>
15897 </li>
15898 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
15899 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
15900     fetched from LDAP.</li>
15901 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
15902 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
15903 </ul>
15904 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
15905
15906 <ul>
15907 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
15908     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
15909     for testing.</li>
15910 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
15911     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
15912     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
15913 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
15914 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
15915 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
15916 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
15917     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
15918 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
15919     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
15920     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
15921 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
15922     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
15923     and help out with translations.</li>
15924 </ul>
15925
15926 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
15927
15928 <ul>
15929 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
15930 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
15931 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15932 </ul>
15933 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
15934
15935 <ul>
15936 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
15937 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
15938 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15939 </ul>
15940
15941 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
15942 get closer to the final release.</p>
15943
15944 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
15945
15946 <ul>
15947 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15948 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15949 </ul>
15950
15951 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
15952 <ul>
15953 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15954 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15955 </ul>
15956 <p>How to report bugs:
15957 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
15958
15959 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
15960 </blockquote>
15961
15962       </div>
15963       <div class="tags">
15964
15965
15966         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15967
15968
15969       </div>
15970     </div>
15971     <div class="padding"></div>
15972
15973     <div class="entry">
15974       <div class="title">
15975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
15976       </div>
15977       <div class="date">
15978         25th July 2010
15979       </div>
15980       <div class="body">
15981         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
15982 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
15983 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
15984 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
15985 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
15986
15987 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
15988 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
15989 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
15990 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
15991 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
15992 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
15993 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
15994
15995 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
15996 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
15997 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
15998 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
15999 up. :)</p>
16000
16001 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
16002 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
16003 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
16004
16005 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
16006 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
16007 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
16008 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
16009 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
16010 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
16011 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
16012 release another day.</p>
16013
16014 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
16015 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16016
16017       </div>
16018       <div class="tags">
16019
16020
16021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16022
16023
16024       </div>
16025     </div>
16026     <div class="padding"></div>
16027
16028     <div class="entry">
16029       <div class="title">
16030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
16031       </div>
16032       <div class="date">
16033         18th July 2010
16034       </div>
16035       <div class="body">
16036         <p>Thanks to
16037 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
16038 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
16039 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
16040 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
16041 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
16042 only available from the development server, until more experience is
16043 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
16044
16045 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
16046 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
16047 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
16048 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
16049 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
16050 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
16051 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
16052
16053       </div>
16054       <div class="tags">
16055
16056
16057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16058
16059
16060       </div>
16061     </div>
16062     <div class="padding"></div>
16063
16064     <div class="entry">
16065       <div class="title">
16066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
16067       </div>
16068       <div class="date">
16069         17th July 2010
16070       </div>
16071       <div class="body">
16072         <p>This is a
16073 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
16074 on my
16075 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
16076 work</a> on
16077 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
16078 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
16079
16080 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
16081 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
16082 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
16083 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
16084
16085 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
16086 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
16087 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
16088
16089 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
16090
16091 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
16092 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
16093 the web.
16094
16095 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
16096 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
16097 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
16098 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
16099 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
16100 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
16101
16102 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
16103 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
16104 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
16105 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
16106 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
16107 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
16108 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
16109 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
16110 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
16111 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
16112 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
16113 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
16114 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
16115 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
16116 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
16117 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
16118
16119 <blockquote><pre>
16120 ldapsearch -h ldap \
16121   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
16122   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
16123   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
16124   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
16125   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
16126   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
16127
16128 ldapsearch -h ldap \
16129   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
16130   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
16131   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
16132   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
16133   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
16134 </pre></blockquote>
16135
16136 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
16137 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
16138 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
16139 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16140 also exist.</p>
16141
16142 <blockquote><pre>
16143 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16144 objectclass: top
16145 objectclass: dnsdomain
16146 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16147 dc: tjener
16148 arecord: 10.0.2.2
16149 associateddomain: tjener.intern
16150
16151 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16152 objectclass: top
16153 objectclass: dnsdomain2
16154 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16155 dc: 2
16156 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
16157 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
16158 </pre></blockquote>
16159
16160 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
16161 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
16162 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
16163 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
16164 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
16165 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
16166 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
16167 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
16168 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
16169 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
16170 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
16171 instead.</p>
16172
16173 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
16174 like this:</p>
16175
16176 <blockquote><pre>
16177 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
16178   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
16179   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
16180   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
16181   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
16182   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
16183
16184 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
16185   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
16186 </pre></blockquote>
16187
16188 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
16189 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
16190 reverse lookups.</p>
16191
16192 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
16193 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
16194 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
16195 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
16196
16197 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
16198 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
16199 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
16200
16201 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
16202 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
16203 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
16204 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
16205 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
16206
16207 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
16208 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
16209 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
16210 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
16211 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
16212
16213 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
16214 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
16215 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
16216 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
16217 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
16218 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
16219
16220 <blockquote><pre>
16221 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
16222     SUP top
16223     AUXILIARY
16224     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
16225           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
16226           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
16227           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
16228           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
16229     ))
16230 </pre></blockquote>
16231
16232 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
16233 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
16234 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
16235 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
16236 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
16237 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
16238
16239 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
16240
16241 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
16242 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
16243 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
16244 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
16245 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
16246
16247 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
16248 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
16249 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
16250 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
16251
16252 <blockquote><pre>
16253 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
16254 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
16255 </pre></blockquote>
16256
16257 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
16258 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
16259 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
16260 search result is this entry:</p>
16261
16262 <blockquote><pre>
16263 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16264 cn: dhcp
16265 objectClass: top
16266 objectClass: dhcpServer
16267 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16268 </pre></blockquote>
16269
16270 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
16271 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
16272 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
16273 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
16274 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
16275 The search result is this entry:</p>
16276
16277 <blockquote><pre>
16278 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16279 cn: DHCP Config
16280 objectClass: top
16281 objectClass: dhcpService
16282 objectClass: dhcpOptions
16283 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16284 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
16285 dhcpStatements: authoritative
16286 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
16287 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
16288 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
16289 </pre></blockquote>
16290
16291 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
16292 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
16293 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
16294 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
16295 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
16296 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
16297 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
16298 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
16299 related computer objects.</p>
16300
16301 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
16302 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
16303 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
16304 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
16305 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
16306 like:</p>
16307
16308 <blockquote><pre>
16309 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16310 cn: hostname
16311 objectClass: top
16312 objectClass: dhcpHost
16313 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16314 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
16315 </pre></blockquote>
16316
16317 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
16318 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
16319 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
16320 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
16321 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
16322 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
16323 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
16324 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
16325 structural object class.
16326
16327 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
16328
16329 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
16330 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
16331 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
16332 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
16333 in the configuration.</p>
16334
16335 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
16336 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
16337 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
16338 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
16339 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
16340 structure.</p>
16341
16342 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
16343 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
16344
16345 <blockquote><pre>
16346 ou=services
16347   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
16348     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
16349     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16350       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16351         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16352     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16353       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16354         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16355     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
16356       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
16357 </pre></blockquote>
16358
16359 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
16360 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
16361 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
16362 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
16363
16364 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
16365 like this:</p>
16366
16367 <blockquote><pre>
16368 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16369 dc: hostname
16370 objectClass: top
16371 objectClass: dhcpHost
16372 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16373 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
16374 associateddomain: hostname.intern
16375 arecord: 10.11.12.13
16376 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16377 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
16378 </pre></blockquote>
16379
16380 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
16381 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
16382 auxiliary object class.</p>
16383
16384       </div>
16385       <div class="tags">
16386
16387
16388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16389
16390
16391       </div>
16392     </div>
16393     <div class="padding"></div>
16394
16395     <div class="entry">
16396       <div class="title">
16397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
16398       </div>
16399       <div class="date">
16400         14th July 2010
16401       </div>
16402       <div class="body">
16403         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
16404 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
16405 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
16406 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
16407 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
16408
16409 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
16410 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
16411
16412 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
16413 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
16414 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
16415 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
16416 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
16417 to a slave DNS server.</p>
16418
16419 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
16420 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
16421 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
16422 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
16423 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
16424 seem to work.</p>
16425
16426 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
16427 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
16428 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
16429 this:</p>
16430
16431 <blockquote><pre>
16432   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16433   cn: hostname
16434   objectClass: dhcphost
16435   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16436   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
16437   associateddomain: hostname.intern
16438   arecord: 10.11.12.13
16439   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16440   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
16441   ldapconfigsound: Y
16442 </pre></blockquote>
16443
16444 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
16445 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
16446 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
16447 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
16448
16449 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
16450 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
16451 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
16452 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
16453 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
16454 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
16455 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
16456 might be a good place to put it.</p>
16457
16458 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16459 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16460
16461       </div>
16462       <div class="tags">
16463
16464
16465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16466
16467
16468       </div>
16469     </div>
16470     <div class="padding"></div>
16471
16472     <div class="entry">
16473       <div class="title">
16474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
16475       </div>
16476       <div class="date">
16477         11th July 2010
16478       </div>
16479       <div class="body">
16480         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
16481 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
16482 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
16483 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
16484
16485 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
16486 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
16487 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
16488 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
16489 LTSP clients.</p>
16490
16491 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
16492 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
16493 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
16494
16495 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
16496 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
16497 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
16498
16499 <blockquote><pre>
16500 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
16501 #
16502 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
16503 #
16504 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
16505 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
16506 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
16507 #
16508 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
16509 # existence of attribute names.
16510 #
16511 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
16512 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
16513 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
16514 #
16515 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
16516 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
16517 #
16518 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
16519 #     SUP top
16520 #     AUXILIARY
16521 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
16522
16523 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
16524 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
16525     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
16526     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
16527         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
16528         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
16529             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
16530             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
16531             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
16532             # bass value on to clients
16533             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
16534         done
16535     done
16536 fi
16537 </pre></blockquote>
16538
16539 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
16540 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
16541 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
16542 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
16543 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
16544
16545 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16546 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16547
16548 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
16549 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
16550 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
16551 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
16552 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
16553 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
16554
16555       </div>
16556       <div class="tags">
16557
16558
16559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16560
16561
16562       </div>
16563     </div>
16564     <div class="padding"></div>
16565
16566     <div class="entry">
16567       <div class="title">
16568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16569       </div>
16570       <div class="date">
16571          9th July 2010
16572       </div>
16573       <div class="body">
16574         <p>Since
16575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
16576 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
16577 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
16578 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
16579 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
16580 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
16581 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
16582 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
16583 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
16584 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
16585 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
16586 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
16587 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
16588
16589       </div>
16590       <div class="tags">
16591
16592
16593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16594
16595
16596       </div>
16597     </div>
16598     <div class="padding"></div>
16599
16600     <div class="entry">
16601       <div class="title">
16602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
16603       </div>
16604       <div class="date">
16605          3rd July 2010
16606       </div>
16607       <div class="body">
16608         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
16609 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
16610 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
16611 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
16612 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
16613 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
16614 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
16615 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
16616
16617 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
16618 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
16619 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
16620 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
16621 publish the difference.</p>
16622
16623 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16624
16625 <blockquote><p>
16626   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16627   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
16628   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
16629   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16630   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
16631   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16632   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
16633   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
16634 </p></blockquote>
16635
16636 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16637
16638 <blockquote><p>
16639   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
16640   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
16641   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
16642   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
16643   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
16644   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
16645   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16646   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16647   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16648   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16649   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
16650   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
16651   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
16652   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
16653   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
16654   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16655   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
16656   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
16657   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
16658   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
16659 </p></blockquote>
16660
16661 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16662
16663 <blockquote><p>
16664   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
16665   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
16666   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16667   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16668   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
16669   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
16670   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
16671   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16672   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16673   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16674   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16675   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
16676   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
16677   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
16678   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
16679   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
16680   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
16681   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
16682   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
16683   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
16684   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
16685 </p></blockquote>
16686
16687 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16688
16689 <blockquote><p>
16690   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
16691   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
16692   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
16693 </p></blockquote>
16694
16695 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
16696 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
16697 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
16698 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
16699 the difference somewhat.
16700
16701       </div>
16702       <div class="tags">
16703
16704
16705         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16706
16707
16708       </div>
16709     </div>
16710     <div class="padding"></div>
16711
16712     <div class="entry">
16713       <div class="title">
16714         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
16715       </div>
16716       <div class="date">
16717          1st July 2010
16718       </div>
16719       <div class="body">
16720         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
16721 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
16722 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
16723 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
16724 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
16725 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
16726 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
16727 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
16728 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
16729
16730 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16731
16732 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
16733 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
16734 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
16735 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
16736 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
16737 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
16738 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
16739 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
16740 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
16741 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
16742 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
16743 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
16744 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
16745 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
16746 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
16747
16748 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
16749
16750 <blockquote><pre>
16751 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
16752 </pre></blockquote>
16753
16754 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
16755 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
16756 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
16757 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
16758 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
16759 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
16760 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
16761 on how to get this working.</p>
16762
16763 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
16764 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
16765 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
16766 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
16767 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
16768 instructions I found in the
16769 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
16770 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
16771
16772 <blockquote><pre>
16773         debug-level             0
16774         reload-count            unlimited
16775         paranoia                no
16776
16777         enable-cache            passwd          yes
16778         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
16779         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
16780         suggested-size          passwd          211
16781         check-files             passwd          yes
16782         persistent              passwd          yes
16783         shared                  passwd          yes
16784         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
16785         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
16786
16787         enable-cache            group           yes
16788         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
16789         negative-time-to-live   group           20
16790         suggested-size          group           211
16791         check-files             group           yes
16792         persistent              group           yes
16793         shared                  group           yes
16794         max-db-size             group           33554432
16795         auto-propagate          group           yes
16796
16797         enable-cache            hosts           no
16798         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
16799         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
16800         suggested-size          hosts           211
16801         check-files             hosts           yes
16802         persistent              hosts           yes
16803         shared                  hosts           yes
16804         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
16805
16806         enable-cache            services        yes
16807         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
16808         negative-time-to-live   services        20
16809         suggested-size          services        211
16810         check-files             services        yes
16811         persistent              services        yes
16812         shared                  services        yes
16813         max-db-size             services        33554432
16814 </pre></blockquote>
16815
16816 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
16817 automatically like the one provided in
16818 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
16819 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
16820 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
16821 look like this:</p>
16822
16823 <blockquote><pre>
16824 passwd:         files ldap
16825 group:          files ldap
16826 shadow:         files ldap
16827 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
16828 networks:       files
16829 protocols:      files
16830 services:       files
16831 ethers:         files
16832 rpc:            files
16833 netgroup:       files ldap
16834 </pre></blockquote>
16835
16836 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
16837 shadow and netgroup.</p>
16838
16839 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
16840 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
16841 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
16842 attributes cached.
16843
16844 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
16845   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16846
16847 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
16848 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
16849 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
16850 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
16851 discovered sssd.</p>
16852
16853 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
16854
16855 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
16856 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
16857 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
16858 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
16859 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
16860 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
16861 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
16862 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
16863 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
16864 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
16865 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
16866 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
16867 version 1.2 is now in testing.
16868
16869 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
16870 roaming setup I want</p>
16871
16872 <blockquote><pre>
16873 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
16874 </pre></blockquote>
16875
16876 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
16877 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
16878
16879 <blockquote><pre>
16880 [sssd]
16881 config_file_version = 2
16882 reconnection_retries = 3
16883 sbus_timeout = 30
16884 services = nss, pam
16885 domains = INTERN
16886
16887 [nss]
16888 filter_groups = root
16889 filter_users = root
16890 reconnection_retries = 3
16891
16892 [pam]
16893 reconnection_retries = 3
16894
16895 [domain/INTERN]
16896 enumerate = false
16897 cache_credentials = true
16898
16899 id_provider = ldap
16900 auth_provider = ldap
16901 chpass_provider = ldap
16902
16903 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
16904 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16905 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
16906 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
16907 </pre></blockquote>
16908
16909 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
16910 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
16911
16912 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
16913 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
16914 modify it manually.</p>
16915
16916 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16917 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16918
16919       </div>
16920       <div class="tags">
16921
16922
16923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16924
16925
16926       </div>
16927     </div>
16928     <div class="padding"></div>
16929
16930     <div class="entry">
16931       <div class="title">
16932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16933       </div>
16934       <div class="date">
16935         28th June 2010
16936       </div>
16937       <div class="body">
16938         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
16939 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
16940 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
16941 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
16942 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
16943 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
16944 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
16945 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
16946 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
16947 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
16948
16949 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
16950 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
16951 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
16952 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
16953 released.</p>
16954
16955 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
16956 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
16957 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
16958 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
16959
16960 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
16961 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16962
16963 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
16964 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
16965 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
16966 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
16967 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
16968
16969       </div>
16970       <div class="tags">
16971
16972
16973         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16974
16975
16976       </div>
16977     </div>
16978     <div class="padding"></div>
16979
16980     <div class="entry">
16981       <div class="title">
16982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
16983       </div>
16984       <div class="date">
16985         24th June 2010
16986       </div>
16987       <div class="body">
16988         <p>A while back, I
16989 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
16990 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
16991 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
16992 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
16993
16994 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
16995 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
16996 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
16997 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
16998
16999 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
17000 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
17001 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
17002 Debian Edu.</p>
17003
17004 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
17005 the
17006 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
17007 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
17008 available today from IETF.</p>
17009
17010 <pre>
17011 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
17012 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
17013 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
17014  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
17015         NAME 'dhcpHost'
17016         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
17017 -       SUP top
17018 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
17019         MUST cn
17020         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
17021         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
17022 </pre>
17023
17024 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
17025 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
17026 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
17027
17028 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17029 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17030
17031       </div>
17032       <div class="tags">
17033
17034
17035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17036
17037
17038       </div>
17039     </div>
17040     <div class="padding"></div>
17041
17042     <div class="entry">
17043       <div class="title">
17044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
17045       </div>
17046       <div class="date">
17047         16th June 2010
17048       </div>
17049       <div class="body">
17050         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
17051 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
17052 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
17053 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
17054 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
17055 this:
17056
17057 <blockquote><pre>
17058 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17059 tasksel --new-install
17060 </pre></blockquote>
17061
17062 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
17063 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
17064 any output what so ever.
17065
17066 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
17067 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
17068 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
17069 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
17070 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
17071 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
17072 code like this:
17073
17074 <blockquote><pre>
17075 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17076 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
17077 $cmd
17078 </pre></blockquote>
17079
17080 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
17081 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
17082 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
17083 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
17084 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
17085 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
17086 installation.</p>
17087
17088 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
17089 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
17090 like this.</p>
17091
17092       </div>
17093       <div class="tags">
17094
17095
17096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17097
17098
17099       </div>
17100     </div>
17101     <div class="padding"></div>
17102
17103     <div class="entry">
17104       <div class="title">
17105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
17106       </div>
17107       <div class="date">
17108         13th June 2010
17109       </div>
17110       <div class="body">
17111         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
17112 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
17113 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
17114 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
17115 pages.</p>
17116
17117 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
17118 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
17119 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
17120 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
17121 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
17122 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
17123 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
17124 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
17125 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
17126 see how the project is doing.</p>
17127
17128 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
17129 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
17130 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
17131 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
17132 Windows.  This is great.</p>
17133
17134       </div>
17135       <div class="tags">
17136
17137
17138         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17139
17140
17141       </div>
17142     </div>
17143     <div class="padding"></div>
17144
17145     <div class="entry">
17146       <div class="title">
17147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
17148       </div>
17149       <div class="date">
17150         13th June 2010
17151       </div>
17152       <div class="body">
17153         <p>My
17154 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
17155 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
17156 finally made the upgrade logs available from
17157 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
17158 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
17159 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
17160 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
17161
17162 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
17163 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
17164 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
17165 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
17166 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
17167 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
17168 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
17169 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
17170
17171 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
17172 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
17173 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
17174 too surprising.</p>
17175
17176 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
17177 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
17178 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
17179 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
17180 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
17181 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
17182 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
17183 continue.</p>
17184
17185 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
17186 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
17187   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
17188   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
17189   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
17190   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
17191   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
17192   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17193   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17194   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
17195   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
17196   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
17197   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
17198   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17199   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17200   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17201   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17202   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17203   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
17204   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
17205   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
17206   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
17207   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
17208   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
17209   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
17210   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
17211   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
17212   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
17213   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
17214   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
17215
17216 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
17217
17218 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
17219   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
17220   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
17221   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
17222   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
17223   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
17224   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
17225   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
17226   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
17227   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
17228   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17229   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
17230   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
17231   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
17232   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
17233   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
17234   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
17235   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
17236   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
17237   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
17238   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
17239   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
17240   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
17241   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
17242   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
17243   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
17244   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
17245   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
17246   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
17247   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17248   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
17249   zip</p>
17250
17251 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
17252
17253 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
17254   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
17255   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
17256   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
17257   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
17258   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
17259   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17260   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17261   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
17262   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
17263   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
17264   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
17265   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17266   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17267   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17268   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17269   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17270   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
17271   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
17272   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
17273   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
17274   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
17275   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
17276   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
17277   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
17278   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
17279   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
17280   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
17281
17282 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
17283 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
17284   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17285   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
17286   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
17287   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17288   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
17289   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
17290   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17291   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
17292   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
17293   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
17294   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
17295   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
17296   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
17297   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
17298   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
17299   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17300   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17301   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
17302   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
17303   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17304   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
17305   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
17306   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17307   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17308   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
17309   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
17310   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
17311   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
17312   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
17313   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
17314   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
17315   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
17316   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
17317   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17318   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
17319   xulrunner-1.9</p>
17320
17321
17322       </div>
17323       <div class="tags">
17324
17325
17326         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17327
17328
17329       </div>
17330     </div>
17331     <div class="padding"></div>
17332
17333     <div class="entry">
17334       <div class="title">
17335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
17336       </div>
17337       <div class="date">
17338         11th June 2010
17339       </div>
17340       <div class="body">
17341         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
17342 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
17343 have been discovered and reported in the process
17344 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
17345 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
17346 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
17347 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
17348 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
17349
17350 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
17351 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
17352 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
17353 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
17354 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
17355 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
17356
17357 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
17358 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
17359 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17360 is created.  The bug report
17361 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
17362 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
17363 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
17364 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
17365 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
17366 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
17367 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
17368 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
17369 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
17370 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
17371 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
17372 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
17373 Debian Squeeze.</p>
17374
17375 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
17376 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
17377 trick:</p>
17378
17379 <blockquote><pre>
17380 #!/bin/sh
17381 set -ex
17382
17383 if [ "$1" ] ; then
17384     desktop=$1
17385 else
17386     desktop=gnome
17387 fi
17388
17389 from=lenny
17390 to=squeeze
17391
17392 exec &lt; /dev/null
17393 unset LANG
17394 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
17395 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
17396 fuser -mv .
17397 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
17398 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17399 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
17400 #!/bin/sh
17401 exit 101
17402 EOF
17403 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
17404 exit_cleanup() {
17405     umount $tmpdir/proc
17406 }
17407 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
17408 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
17409 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
17410
17411 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
17412
17413 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
17414 # to return the correct answers.
17415 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
17416     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
17417
17418 # Include the desktop and laptop task
17419 for test in desktop laptop ; do
17420     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
17421 #!/bin/sh
17422 exit 2
17423 EOF
17424     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
17425 done
17426
17427 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17428 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
17429 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
17430 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
17431
17432 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
17433 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17434 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17435 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
17436 fuser -mv
17437 </pre></blockquote>
17438
17439 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
17440 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
17441 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
17442 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
17443 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
17444 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
17445
17446 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
17447 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
17448 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
17449 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
17450 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
17451 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
17452 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
17453
17454 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
17455 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
17456 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
17457 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
17458 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
17459 packages.</p>
17460
17461       </div>
17462       <div class="tags">
17463
17464
17465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17466
17467
17468       </div>
17469     </div>
17470     <div class="padding"></div>
17471
17472     <div class="entry">
17473       <div class="title">
17474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
17475       </div>
17476       <div class="date">
17477          6th June 2010
17478       </div>
17479       <div class="body">
17480         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
17481 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
17482 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
17483 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
17484 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
17485 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
17486 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
17487
17488 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
17489 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
17490 COLUMNS):</p>
17491
17492 <blockquote><pre>
17493 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
17494 previous=N
17495 PREVLEVEL=
17496 RUNLEVEL=
17497 runlevel=S
17498 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
17499 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
17500 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
17501 </pre></blockquote>
17502
17503 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
17504 script.</p>
17505
17506 <blockquote><pre>
17507 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
17508 previous=N
17509 PREVLEVEL=N
17510 RUNLEVEL=S
17511 runlevel=S
17512 </pre></blockquote>
17513
17514 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
17515 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
17516 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
17517
17518 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
17519 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
17520 choice.</p>
17521
17522       </div>
17523       <div class="tags">
17524
17525
17526         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17527
17528
17529       </div>
17530     </div>
17531     <div class="padding"></div>
17532
17533     <div class="entry">
17534       <div class="title">
17535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
17536       </div>
17537       <div class="date">
17538          6th June 2010
17539       </div>
17540       <div class="body">
17541         <p>Via the
17542 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
17543 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
17544 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
17545 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
17546 following the standards wars of today.</p>
17547
17548       </div>
17549       <div class="tags">
17550
17551
17552         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17553
17554
17555       </div>
17556     </div>
17557     <div class="padding"></div>
17558
17559     <div class="entry">
17560       <div class="title">
17561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
17562       </div>
17563       <div class="date">
17564          3rd June 2010
17565       </div>
17566       <div class="body">
17567         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
17568 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
17569 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
17570 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
17571 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
17572
17573 <blockquote><pre>
17574 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
17575   vendor                    count
17576   Dell Computer Corporation     1
17577     PowerEdge 1750              1
17578   IBM                           1
17579     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
17580   Intel                         2
17581   [no-dmi-info]                 3
17582 maintainer:~#
17583 </pre></blockquote>
17584
17585 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
17586 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
17587 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
17588 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
17589 option to list the individual machines.</p>
17590
17591 <p>A larger list is
17592 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
17593 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
17594 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
17595 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
17596 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
17597 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
17598 collector.</p>
17599
17600       </div>
17601       <div class="tags">
17602
17603
17604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
17605
17606
17607       </div>
17608     </div>
17609     <div class="padding"></div>
17610
17611     <div class="entry">
17612       <div class="title">
17613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
17614       </div>
17615       <div class="date">
17616          1st June 2010
17617       </div>
17618       <div class="body">
17619         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
17620 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
17621 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
17622 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
17623 wait.</p>
17624
17625 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
17626 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
17627 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
17628 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
17629 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
17630 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
17631
17632 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
17633 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
17634 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
17635 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
17636 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
17637 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
17638 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
17639 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
17640
17641 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
17642
17643       </div>
17644       <div class="tags">
17645
17646
17647         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17648
17649
17650       </div>
17651     </div>
17652     <div class="padding"></div>
17653
17654     <div class="entry">
17655       <div class="title">
17656         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
17657       </div>
17658       <div class="date">
17659         27th May 2010
17660       </div>
17661       <div class="body">
17662         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
17663 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
17664 issues are known and should be solved:
17665
17666 <p><ul>
17667
17668 <li>The wicd package seen to
17669 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
17670 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
17671 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
17672 seem to be on the case.</li>
17673
17674 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
17675 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
17676 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
17677 maintainer is on the case.</li>
17678
17679 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
17680 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
17681 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
17682 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
17683 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
17684 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
17685 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
17686 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
17687
17688 </ul></p>
17689
17690 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
17691 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
17692 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
17693 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
17694
17695 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17696 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17697 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17698 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17699
17700 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
17701
17702       </div>
17703       <div class="tags">
17704
17705
17706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17707
17708
17709       </div>
17710     </div>
17711     <div class="padding"></div>
17712
17713     <div class="entry">
17714       <div class="title">
17715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
17716       </div>
17717       <div class="date">
17718         22nd May 2010
17719       </div>
17720       <div class="body">
17721         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
17722 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
17723 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
17724 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
17725
17726 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
17727 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
17728 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
17729 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
17730 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
17731 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
17732 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
17733 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
17734 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
17735 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
17736 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
17737 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
17738 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
17739 going to work.</p>
17740
17741 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
17742 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
17743 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
17744 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
17745 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
17746 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
17747 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
17748 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
17749 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
17750 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
17751 Edu.</p>
17752
17753 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
17754 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
17755 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
17756 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
17757 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
17758 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
17759
17760 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
17761 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
17762
17763       </div>
17764       <div class="tags">
17765
17766
17767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17768
17769
17770       </div>
17771     </div>
17772     <div class="padding"></div>
17773
17774     <div class="entry">
17775       <div class="title">
17776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
17777       </div>
17778       <div class="date">
17779         19th May 2010
17780       </div>
17781       <div class="body">
17782         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
17783 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
17784 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
17785 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
17786 into unstable.  The
17787 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
17788 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
17789 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
17790 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
17791 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17792 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
17793 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
17794
17795 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
17796 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
17797 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
17798 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
17799 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
17800 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
17801 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
17802 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
17803
17804 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
17805 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
17806 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
17807 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
17808 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
17809 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
17810 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
17811
17812 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
17813 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
17814 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
17815 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
17816 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
17817 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
17818 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
17819 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
17820 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
17821 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
17822 on the home directory servers.</p>
17823
17824 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
17825 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
17826 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
17827 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
17828 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
17829 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
17830
17831 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17832 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17833
17834       </div>
17835       <div class="tags">
17836
17837
17838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17839
17840
17841       </div>
17842     </div>
17843     <div class="padding"></div>
17844
17845     <div class="entry">
17846       <div class="title">
17847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
17848       </div>
17849       <div class="date">
17850         14th May 2010
17851       </div>
17852       <div class="body">
17853         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
17854 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
17855 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
17856 expected, if I am to believe the
17857 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17858 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
17859 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
17860 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
17861 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
17862 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
17863 version.</p>
17864
17865 More information about
17866 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17867 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
17868 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
17869 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17870
17871 <blockquote><pre>
17872 CONCURRENCY=none
17873 </pre></blockquote>
17874
17875 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17876 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17877 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17878 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17879
17880       </div>
17881       <div class="tags">
17882
17883
17884         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17885
17886
17887       </div>
17888     </div>
17889     <div class="padding"></div>
17890
17891     <div class="entry">
17892       <div class="title">
17893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
17894       </div>
17895       <div class="date">
17896         14th May 2010
17897       </div>
17898       <div class="body">
17899         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
17900 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
17901 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
17902 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
17903 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
17904 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
17905 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
17906 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
17907
17908 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
17909 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
17910 this on the collector host:</p>
17911
17912 <blockquote><pre>
17913 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
17914 </pre></blockquote>
17915
17916 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
17917 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
17918
17919 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
17920 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
17921 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
17922 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
17923 written yet.</p>
17924
17925       </div>
17926       <div class="tags">
17927
17928
17929         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
17930
17931
17932       </div>
17933     </div>
17934     <div class="padding"></div>
17935
17936     <div class="entry">
17937       <div class="title">
17938         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
17939       </div>
17940       <div class="date">
17941         13th May 2010
17942       </div>
17943       <div class="body">
17944         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
17945 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
17946 has been
17947 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
17948
17949 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
17950 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
17951 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
17952 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
17953 based boot system.  Tollef is
17954 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
17955 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
17956 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
17957 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
17958 at the moment do not.</p>
17959
17960 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
17961 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
17962 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
17963 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
17964 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
17965 way forward.</p>
17966
17967 <p>In the mean time, based on the
17968 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17969 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
17970 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
17971 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
17972 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
17973 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
17974 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
17975 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
17976
17977       </div>
17978       <div class="tags">
17979
17980
17981         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17982
17983
17984       </div>
17985     </div>
17986     <div class="padding"></div>
17987
17988     <div class="entry">
17989       <div class="title">
17990         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
17991       </div>
17992       <div class="date">
17993          6th May 2010
17994       </div>
17995       <div class="body">
17996         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
17997 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
17998 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
17999 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
18000 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18001 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
18002 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
18003
18004 <blockquote><pre>
18005 CONCURRENCY=makefile
18006 </pre></blockquote>
18007
18008 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
18009 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
18010 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
18011 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
18012 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
18013 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
18014 make this happen.</p>
18015
18016 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
18017 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
18018 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
18019 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
18020 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
18021
18022 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
18023 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
18024 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
18025 fix the remaining issues.</p>
18026
18027 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18028 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18029 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18030 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18031
18032       </div>
18033       <div class="tags">
18034
18035
18036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18037
18038
18039       </div>
18040     </div>
18041     <div class="padding"></div>
18042
18043     <div class="entry">
18044       <div class="title">
18045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
18046       </div>
18047       <div class="date">
18048          2nd May 2010
18049       </div>
18050       <div class="body">
18051         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
18052 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
18053 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
18054
18055 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
18056 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
18057 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
18058 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
18059 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
18060
18061 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
18062 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
18063
18064 <blockquote><pre>
18065 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
18066 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
18067 Password expires                                        : never
18068 Password inactive                                       : never
18069 Account expires                                         : never
18070 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
18071 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
18072 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
18073 root@tjener:~#
18074 </pre></blockquote>
18075
18076 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
18077 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
18078 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
18079 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
18080 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
18081 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
18082
18083 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
18084 intended:</p>
18085
18086 <blockquote><pre>
18087 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
18088 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
18089 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
18090 Password expires                                        : never
18091 Password inactive                                       : never
18092 Account expires                                         : never
18093 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
18094 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
18095 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
18096 root@tjener:~#
18097 </pre></blockquote>
18098
18099 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
18100 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
18101 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
18102
18103 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
18104 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
18105
18106 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
18107 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18108
18109 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
18110 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
18111 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
18112 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
18113 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
18114 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
18115 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
18116
18117 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
18118 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
18119 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
18120 change.</p>
18121
18122       </div>
18123       <div class="tags">
18124
18125
18126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
18127
18128
18129       </div>
18130     </div>
18131     <div class="padding"></div>
18132
18133     <div class="entry">
18134       <div class="title">
18135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
18136       </div>
18137       <div class="date">
18138         28th April 2010
18139       </div>
18140       <div class="body">
18141         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
18142 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
18143 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
18144 and go.</p>
18145
18146 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
18147 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
18148 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
18149 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
18150
18151 <ul>
18152
18153  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
18154    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
18155    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
18156    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
18157    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
18158    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
18159    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
18160    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
18161    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
18162    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
18163    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
18164    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
18165
18166  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
18167    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
18168    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
18169    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
18170    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
18171    or the Fedora developed
18172    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
18173    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
18174
18175  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
18176    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
18177    directory, using unison.</li>
18178
18179  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
18180    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
18181    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
18182    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
18183    implemented.</li>
18184
18185  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
18186    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
18187
18188  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
18189    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
18190    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
18191
18192 </ul>
18193
18194 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
18195 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
18196 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
18197 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
18198 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
18199 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
18200 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
18201 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
18202 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
18203
18204 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18205 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18206
18207       </div>
18208       <div class="tags">
18209
18210
18211         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18212
18213
18214       </div>
18215     </div>
18216     <div class="padding"></div>
18217
18218     <div class="entry">
18219       <div class="title">
18220         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
18221       </div>
18222       <div class="date">
18223         19th April 2010
18224       </div>
18225       <div class="body">
18226         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
18227 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
18228 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
18229 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
18230 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
18231 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
18232 restrictions on the web, for example from
18233 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
18234 epub-version from
18235 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
18236 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
18237 strongly recommend this book.</p>
18238
18239       </div>
18240       <div class="tags">
18241
18242
18243         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18244
18245
18246       </div>
18247     </div>
18248     <div class="padding"></div>
18249
18250     <div class="entry">
18251       <div class="title">
18252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
18253       </div>
18254       <div class="date">
18255         14th April 2010
18256       </div>
18257       <div class="body">
18258         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
18259 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
18260 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
18261 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
18262 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
18263 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
18264 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
18265 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
18266 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
18267
18268 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
18269 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
18270 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
18271 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
18272 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
18273
18274 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
18275 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
18276
18277 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
18278 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
18279 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
18280 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
18281 to work properly.</p>
18282
18283 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
18284 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
18285 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
18286 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
18287 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
18288 time.</p>
18289
18290 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
18291 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
18292 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
18293 up in a few days.</p>
18294
18295       </div>
18296       <div class="tags">
18297
18298
18299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18300
18301
18302       </div>
18303     </div>
18304     <div class="padding"></div>
18305
18306     <div class="entry">
18307       <div class="title">
18308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
18309       </div>
18310       <div class="date">
18311          6th March 2010
18312       </div>
18313       <div class="body">
18314         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
18315 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
18316 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
18317 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
18318 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
18319 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
18320
18321 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
18322 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
18323 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
18324 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
18325
18326 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
18327 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
18328 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
18329 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
18330 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
18331 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
18332
18333       </div>
18334       <div class="tags">
18335
18336
18337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18338
18339
18340       </div>
18341     </div>
18342     <div class="padding"></div>
18343
18344     <div class="entry">
18345       <div class="title">
18346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
18347       </div>
18348       <div class="date">
18349         11th February 2010
18350       </div>
18351       <div class="body">
18352         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
18353 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
18354 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
18355 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
18356 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
18357 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
18358 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
18359
18360 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
18361
18362 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
18363 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
18364 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
18365 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
18366
18367       </div>
18368       <div class="tags">
18369
18370
18371         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18372
18373
18374       </div>
18375     </div>
18376     <div class="padding"></div>
18377
18378     <div class="entry">
18379       <div class="title">
18380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
18381       </div>
18382       <div class="date">
18383         27th January 2010
18384       </div>
18385       <div class="body">
18386         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
18387 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
18388 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
18389 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
18390 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
18391 further.</p>
18392
18393 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
18394 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
18395 configured to be a server for the
18396 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
18397 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
18398 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
18399 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
18400 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
18401 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
18402 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
18403 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
18404 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
18405 and Nagios configuration.</p>
18406
18407 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
18408 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
18409 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
18410 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
18411
18412 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
18413 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
18414 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
18415 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
18416 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
18417 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
18418 the machine.</p>
18419
18420 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
18421 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
18422 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
18423 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
18424
18425 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
18426 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
18427 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
18428 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
18429 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
18430 everything is taken care of.</p>
18431
18432       </div>
18433       <div class="tags">
18434
18435
18436         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
18437
18438
18439       </div>
18440     </div>
18441     <div class="padding"></div>
18442
18443     <div class="entry">
18444       <div class="title">
18445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
18446       </div>
18447       <div class="date">
18448         12th August 2009
18449       </div>
18450       <div class="body">
18451         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
18452 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
18453 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
18454 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
18455
18456 <table>
18457 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18458 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18459 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
18460 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
18461 </table>
18462
18463 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
18464 got these numbers:</p>
18465
18466 <table>
18467 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18468 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
18469 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
18470 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
18471 </table>
18472
18473 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
18474
18475 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
18476 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
18477 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
18478 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
18479 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
18480
18481
18482 <table>
18483 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18484 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18485 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
18486 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
18487 </table>
18488
18489 <p>And with 'site:no':
18490
18491 <table>
18492 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18493 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
18494 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
18495 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
18496 </table>
18497
18498 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
18499 numbers.</p>
18500
18501       </div>
18502       <div class="tags">
18503
18504
18505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18506
18507
18508       </div>
18509     </div>
18510     <div class="padding"></div>
18511
18512     <div class="entry">
18513       <div class="title">
18514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
18515       </div>
18516       <div class="date">
18517          8th August 2009
18518       </div>
18519       <div class="body">
18520         <p>According to <a
18521 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
18522 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
18523 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
18524 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
18525 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
18526 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
18527 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
18528 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
18529 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
18530 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
18531
18532 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
18533 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
18534 seminar this autumn.</p>
18535
18536       </div>
18537       <div class="tags">
18538
18539
18540         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18541
18542
18543       </div>
18544     </div>
18545     <div class="padding"></div>
18546
18547     <div class="entry">
18548       <div class="title">
18549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
18550       </div>
18551       <div class="date">
18552         27th July 2009
18553       </div>
18554       <div class="body">
18555         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
18556 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
18557 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
18558 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
18559 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
18560 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
18561 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
18562
18563 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
18564 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
18565 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
18566
18567       </div>
18568       <div class="tags">
18569
18570
18571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18572
18573
18574       </div>
18575     </div>
18576     <div class="padding"></div>
18577
18578     <div class="entry">
18579       <div class="title">
18580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
18581       </div>
18582       <div class="date">
18583         22nd July 2009
18584       </div>
18585       <div class="body">
18586         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
18587 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
18588 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
18589 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
18590 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
18591 the package up to date.</p>
18592
18593 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
18594 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
18595 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
18596 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
18597 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
18598 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
18599 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
18600 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
18601 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
18602 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
18603 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
18604 working on the future release.</p>
18605
18606 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
18607 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
18608
18609       </div>
18610       <div class="tags">
18611
18612
18613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18614
18615
18616       </div>
18617     </div>
18618     <div class="padding"></div>
18619
18620     <div class="entry">
18621       <div class="title">
18622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
18623       </div>
18624       <div class="date">
18625         24th June 2009
18626       </div>
18627       <div class="body">
18628         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
18629 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
18630 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
18631 funded
18632 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
18633 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
18634 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
18635 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
18636 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
18637 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
18638
18639 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
18640 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
18641 boot:</p>
18642
18643 <ul>
18644
18645 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
18646
18647 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
18648    clock is in UTC.</li>
18649
18650 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
18651    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18652    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
18653
18654 </ul>
18655
18656 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
18657 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
18658 Villegas</a>.
18659
18660 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
18661 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
18662 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
18663 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
18664 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
18665 using this.</p>
18666
18667 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
18668 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
18669 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
18670 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
18671 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
18672 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
18673 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
18674
18675       </div>
18676       <div class="tags">
18677
18678
18679         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18680
18681
18682       </div>
18683     </div>
18684     <div class="padding"></div>
18685
18686     <div class="entry">
18687       <div class="title">
18688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
18689       </div>
18690       <div class="date">
18691          2nd May 2009
18692       </div>
18693       <div class="body">
18694         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
18695 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
18696 do not yet know them.</p>
18697
18698 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
18699 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
18700 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
18701 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
18702 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
18703 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
18704 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
18705 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
18706 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
18707 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
18708 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
18709
18710 <p>The second one is
18711 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
18712 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
18713 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
18714 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
18715 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
18716 and the company behind it is running
18717 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
18718 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
18719 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
18720 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
18721 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
18722 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
18723 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
18724 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
18725
18726 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
18727 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
18728 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
18729 surrounded by today.</p>
18730
18731       </div>
18732       <div class="tags">
18733
18734
18735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18736
18737
18738       </div>
18739     </div>
18740     <div class="padding"></div>
18741
18742     <div class="entry">
18743       <div class="title">
18744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
18745       </div>
18746       <div class="date">
18747         28th April 2009
18748       </div>
18749       <div class="body">
18750         <p>Julien Blache
18751 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
18752 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
18753 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
18754 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
18755 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
18756 properties.</p>
18757
18758       </div>
18759       <div class="tags">
18760
18761
18762         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18763
18764
18765       </div>
18766     </div>
18767     <div class="padding"></div>
18768
18769     <div class="entry">
18770       <div class="title">
18771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
18772       </div>
18773       <div class="date">
18774          5th April 2009
18775       </div>
18776       <div class="body">
18777         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
18778 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
18779 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
18780 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
18781 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
18782 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
18783 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
18784 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
18785
18786 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
18787 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
18788 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
18789   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18790   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
18791
18792 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
18793 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
18794 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
18795 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
18796
18797 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
18798 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
18799 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
18800 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
18801
18802 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
18803 set -e
18804 URL="$1"
18805 SAVEFILE="$2"
18806 DURATION="$3"
18807 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
18808   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18809   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
18810 pid=$!
18811 sleep $DURATION
18812 kill $pid
18813 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
18814
18815       </div>
18816       <div class="tags">
18817
18818
18819         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
18820
18821
18822       </div>
18823     </div>
18824     <div class="padding"></div>
18825
18826     <div class="entry">
18827       <div class="title">
18828         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
18829       </div>
18830       <div class="date">
18831         30th March 2009
18832       </div>
18833       <div class="body">
18834         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
18835 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
18836 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
18837 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
18838 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
18839 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
18840 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
18841 application.</p>
18842
18843 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
18844 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
18845 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
18846 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
18847 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
18848 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
18849 blocked from doing so.</p>
18850
18851 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
18852 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
18853 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
18854 requirements change.</p>
18855
18856 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
18857 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
18858 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
18859
18860       </div>
18861       <div class="tags">
18862
18863
18864         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18865
18866
18867       </div>
18868     </div>
18869     <div class="padding"></div>
18870
18871     <div class="entry">
18872       <div class="title">
18873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
18874       </div>
18875       <div class="date">
18876         29th March 2009
18877       </div>
18878       <div class="body">
18879         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
18880 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
18881 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
18882 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
18883 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
18884 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
18885 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
18886 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
18887 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
18888 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
18889 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
18890 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
18891 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
18892 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
18893 now. :)</p>
18894
18895       </div>
18896       <div class="tags">
18897
18898
18899         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18900
18901
18902       </div>
18903     </div>
18904     <div class="padding"></div>
18905
18906     <div class="entry">
18907       <div class="title">
18908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
18909       </div>
18910       <div class="date">
18911         29th March 2009
18912       </div>
18913       <div class="body">
18914         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
18915 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
18916 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
18917 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
18918 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
18919 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
18920
18921 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
18922 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
18923 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
18924 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
18925 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
18926 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
18927 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
18928 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
18929 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
18930 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
18931 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
18932 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
18933 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
18934
18935 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
18936 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
18937 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
18938 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
18939
18940 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
18941 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
18942
18943 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
18944 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
18945 new IETF work group?</p>
18946
18947       </div>
18948       <div class="tags">
18949
18950
18951         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18952
18953
18954       </div>
18955     </div>
18956     <div class="padding"></div>
18957
18958     <div class="entry">
18959       <div class="title">
18960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
18961       </div>
18962       <div class="date">
18963         28th February 2009
18964       </div>
18965       <div class="body">
18966         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
18967 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
18968 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
18969 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
18970 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
18971 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
18972 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
18973 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
18974 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
18975 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
18976 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
18977 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
18978 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
18979 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
18980 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
18981 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
18982 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
18983 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
18984 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
18985 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
18986 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
18987 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
18988 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
18989 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
18990 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
18991 machine.</p>
18992
18993 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
18994 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
18995 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
18996 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
18997 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
18998 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
18999 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
19000
19001 <pre>
19002 use LWP::Simple;
19003 use POSIX;
19004 use WWW::Mechanize;
19005 use Date::Parse;
19006 [...]
19007 sub get_support_info {
19008     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
19009     my $str;
19010
19011     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
19012         # fetch website from Dell support
19013         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
19014         my $webpage = get($url);
19015         return undef unless ($webpage);
19016
19017         my $daysleft = -1;
19018         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
19019         foreach my $line (@lines) {
19020             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
19021             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19022             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
19023
19024             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
19025             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
19026             my $lastend = "";
19027             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
19028                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
19029
19030                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19031                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
19032                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19033                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
19034                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
19035                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
19036                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
19037             }
19038             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19039             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19040                 if ($lastend lt $today);
19041         }
19042     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
19043         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
19044         my $url =
19045             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
19046         $mech->get($url);
19047         my $fields = {
19048             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
19049             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
19050             'country' => 'NO',
19051             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
19052             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
19053         };
19054         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
19055                             fields      => $fields );
19056         # Next step is screen scraping
19057         my $content = $mech->content();
19058
19059         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19060         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
19061         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
19062         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
19063
19064         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19065
19066         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
19067             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
19068                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
19069             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
19070             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19071                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
19072             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19073                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
19074
19075             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
19076
19077             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19078                 if ($end lt $today);
19079         }
19080     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
19081         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
19082         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
19083         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
19084             my $content =
19085                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
19086             if ($content) {
19087                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19088                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
19089                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
19090                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
19091
19092                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
19093                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
19094
19095                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
19096
19097                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19098                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19099                     if ($end lt $today);
19100             }
19101         }
19102     }
19103     return $str;
19104 }
19105 </pre>
19106
19107 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
19108 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
19109 from dmidecode.</p>
19110
19111 <pre>
19112 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
19113                        "447707-B21");
19114 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
19115 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
19116                        "1234567");
19117 </pre>
19118
19119 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
19120 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
19121
19122 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
19123 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
19124 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
19125 do so.</p>
19126
19127       </div>
19128       <div class="tags">
19129
19130
19131         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19132
19133
19134       </div>
19135     </div>
19136     <div class="padding"></div>
19137
19138     <div class="entry">
19139       <div class="title">
19140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
19141       </div>
19142       <div class="date">
19143         20th February 2009
19144       </div>
19145       <div class="body">
19146         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
19147 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
19148 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
19149 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
19150 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
19151 the "missing" computer.</p>
19152
19153 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
19154 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
19155 code blocks as defined in the
19156 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
19157 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
19158 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
19159 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
19160 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
19161 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
19162 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
19163 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
19164 codes.</p>
19165
19166 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
19167 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
19168 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
19169 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
19170 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
19171 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
19172
19173 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
19174 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
19175 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
19176 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
19177 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
19178 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
19179 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
19180 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
19181 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
19182 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
19183
19184 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
19185 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
19186 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
19187
19188       </div>
19189       <div class="tags">
19190
19191
19192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19193
19194
19195       </div>
19196     </div>
19197     <div class="padding"></div>
19198
19199     <div class="entry">
19200       <div class="title">
19201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
19202       </div>
19203       <div class="date">
19204         17th January 2009
19205       </div>
19206       <div class="body">
19207         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
19208 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
19209 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
19210 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
19211 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
19212 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
19213 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
19214 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
19215 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
19216 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
19217 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
19218 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
19219 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
19220 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
19221
19222 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
19223 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
19224 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
19225 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
19226 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
19227 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
19228 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
19229 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
19230 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
19231 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
19232 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
19233 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
19234 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
19235 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
19236 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
19237 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
19238 playing when the download is done.</p>
19239
19240 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
19241 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
19242 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
19243 too.</p>
19244
19245 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
19246 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
19247 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
19248 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
19249
19250       </div>
19251       <div class="tags">
19252
19253
19254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19255
19256
19257       </div>
19258     </div>
19259     <div class="padding"></div>
19260
19261     <div class="entry">
19262       <div class="title">
19263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
19264       </div>
19265       <div class="date">
19266         28th December 2008
19267       </div>
19268       <div class="body">
19269         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
19270 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
19271 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
19272 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
19273 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
19274 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
19275 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
19276 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
19277 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
19278 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
19279 source, sink and mixer applications and
19280 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
19281 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
19282 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
19283 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
19284 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
19285 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
19286 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
19287 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
19288 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
19289
19290 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
19291 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
19292 larger stick as well.</p>
19293
19294       </div>
19295       <div class="tags">
19296
19297
19298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
19299
19300
19301       </div>
19302     </div>
19303     <div class="padding"></div>
19304
19305     <div class="entry">
19306       <div class="title">
19307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
19308       </div>
19309       <div class="date">
19310          7th December 2008
19311       </div>
19312       <div class="body">
19313         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
19314 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
19315 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
19316 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
19317 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
19318 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
19319 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
19320 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
19321
19322 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
19323 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
19324 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
19325 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
19326 of these cards.</p>
19327
19328       </div>
19329       <div class="tags">
19330
19331
19332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
19333
19334
19335       </div>
19336     </div>
19337     <div class="padding"></div>
19338
19339     <div class="entry">
19340       <div class="title">
19341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
19342       </div>
19343       <div class="date">
19344         25th November 2008
19345       </div>
19346       <div class="body">
19347         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
19348 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
19349 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
19350 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
19351 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
19352 notes are available on
19353 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
19354 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
19355 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
19356 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
19357 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
19358 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
19359 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
19360 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
19361 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
19362
19363 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
19364 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
19365
19366       </div>
19367       <div class="tags">
19368
19369
19370         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19371
19372
19373       </div>
19374     </div>
19375     <div class="padding"></div>
19376
19377     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
19378     <div id="sidebar">
19379
19380
19381
19382 <h2>Archive</h2>
19383 <ul>
19384
19385 <li>2014
19386 <ul>
19387
19388 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19389
19390 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
19391
19392 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
19393
19394 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (1)</a></li>
19395
19396 </ul></li>
19397
19398 <li>2013
19399 <ul>
19400
19401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
19402
19403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
19404
19405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
19406
19407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
19408
19409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19410
19411 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
19412
19413 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19414
19415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19416
19417 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
19418
19419 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
19420
19421 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
19422
19423 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19424
19425 </ul></li>
19426
19427 <li>2012
19428 <ul>
19429
19430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
19431
19432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
19433
19434 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
19435
19436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
19437
19438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
19439
19440 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
19441
19442 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
19443
19444 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19445
19446 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
19447
19448 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
19449
19450 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
19451
19452 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19453
19454 </ul></li>
19455
19456 <li>2011
19457 <ul>
19458
19459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
19460
19461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
19462
19463 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
19464
19465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
19466
19467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
19468
19469 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
19470
19471 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19472
19473 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19474
19475 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
19476
19477 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19478
19479 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19480
19481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
19482
19483 </ul></li>
19484
19485 <li>2010
19486 <ul>
19487
19488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19489
19490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
19491
19492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
19493
19494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
19495
19496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19497
19498 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
19499
19500 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
19501
19502 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
19503
19504 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
19505
19506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
19507
19508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
19509
19510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
19511
19512 </ul></li>
19513
19514 <li>2009
19515 <ul>
19516
19517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
19518
19519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
19520
19521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
19522
19523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
19524
19525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19526
19527 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
19528
19529 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
19530
19531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19532
19533 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
19534
19535 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19536
19537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19538
19539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19540
19541 </ul></li>
19542
19543 <li>2008
19544 <ul>
19545
19546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
19547
19548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19549
19550 </ul></li>
19551
19552 </ul>
19553
19554
19555
19556 <h2>Tags</h2>
19557 <ul>
19558
19559  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
19560
19561  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
19562
19563  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
19564
19565  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
19566
19567  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
19568
19569  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
19570
19571  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
19572
19573  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
19574
19575  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (95)</a></li>
19576
19577  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (146)</a></li>
19578
19579  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
19580
19581  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
19582
19583  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
19584
19585  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (242)</a></li>
19586
19587  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
19588
19589  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
19590
19591  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
19592
19593  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (7)</a></li>
19594
19595  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
19596
19597  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (40)</a></li>
19598
19599  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
19600
19601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
19602
19603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
19604
19605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
19606
19607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
19608
19609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
19610
19611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (26)</a></li>
19612
19613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (243)</a></li>
19614
19615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
19616
19617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
19618
19619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
19620
19621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (46)</a></li>
19622
19623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (70)</a></li>
19624
19625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
19626
19627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
19628
19629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
19630
19631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
19632
19633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
19634
19635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
19636
19637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
19638
19639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
19640
19641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (37)</a></li>
19642
19643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
19644
19645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
19646
19647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
19648
19649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
19650
19651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
19652
19653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (23)</a></li>
19654
19655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
19656
19657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
19658
19659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (40)</a></li>
19660
19661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
19662
19663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (29)</a></li>
19664
19665 </ul>
19666
19667
19668     </div>
19669     <p style="text-align: right">
19670  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
19671 </p>
19672
19673   </body>
19674 </html>