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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         17th July 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Today I switched to
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
  33 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
  34 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
  35 <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
  36 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
  37 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
  38 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
  39 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
  40 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
  41 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
  42 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
  43 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
  44 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
  45 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
  46 station from now on.</p>
  47
  48 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
  49 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
  50 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
  51 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
  52 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
  53 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
  54 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
  55 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
  56 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
  57 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
  58 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
  59 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
  60
  61 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
  62 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
  63 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
  64 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
  65 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
  66 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
  67 parameters are tuned:</p>
  68
  69 <ul>
  70
  71 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
  72     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
  73
  74 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
  75     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
  76     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
  77
  78 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
  79     systems.</li>
  80
  81 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
  82     /etc/fstab.</li>
  83
  84 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
  85
  86 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
  87     cron.daily).</li>
  88
  89 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
  90     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
  91
  92 </ul>
  93
  94 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
  95 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
  96 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
  97 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
  98 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
  99 from getting the data on the disk (see
 100 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
 101 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
 102 right thing to do.</p>
 103
 104 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
 105 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 106 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
 107
 108 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
 109 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
 110 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
 111 instead of during my work.</p>
 112
 113 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
 114 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
 115
 116 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
 117 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
 118 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
 119
 120 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
 121 there.</p>
 122
 123 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
 124 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
 125 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
 126 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
 127 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
 128 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
 129 back.</p>
 130
 131       </div>
 132       <div class="tags">
 133
 134
 135         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>.
 136
 137
 138       </div>
 139     </div>
 140     <div class="padding"></div>
 141
 142     <div class="entry">
 143       <div class="title">
 144         <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>
 145       </div>
 146       <div class="date">
 147         10th July 2013
 148       </div>
 149       <div class="body">
 150         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
 151 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
 152 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
 153 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
 154 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
 155 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
 156 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
 157 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
 158
 159 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
 160 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
 161 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
 162 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
 163 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
 164 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
 165 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
 166 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
 167 lock up when I download a new
 168 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
 169 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
 170 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
 171
 172 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 173 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
 174 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 175 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
 176 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 177 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 178
 179 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 180 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
 181 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 182 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
 183 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 184 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 185
 186 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
 187 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
 188 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
 189 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
 190 exist).</p>
 191
 192       </div>
 193       <div class="tags">
 194
 195
 196         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>.
 197
 198
 199       </div>
 200     </div>
 201     <div class="padding"></div>
 202
 203     <div class="entry">
 204       <div class="title">
 205         <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>
 206       </div>
 207       <div class="date">
 208          9th July 2013
 209       </div>
 210       <div class="body">
 211         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
 212 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
 213 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
 214 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
 215 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 216 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
 217 Bitraf</a>.</p>
 218
 219 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
 220 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
 221 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
 222 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
 223 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
 224
 225       </div>
 226       <div class="tags">
 227
 228
 229         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>.
 230
 231
 232       </div>
 233     </div>
 234     <div class="padding"></div>
 235
 236     <div class="entry">
 237       <div class="title">
 238         <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>
 239       </div>
 240       <div class="date">
 241          5th July 2013
 242       </div>
 243       <div class="body">
 244         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
 245 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
 246 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
 247 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
 248 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
 249 ended up picking a
 250 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
 251 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
 252 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
 253 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
 254 on that below.</p>
 255
 256 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 257 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 258 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 259 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 260 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 261 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
 262 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
 263 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
 264 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
 265
 266 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
 267 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
 268 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
 269 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
 270 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
 271 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
 272 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
 273
 274 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
 275 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
 276
 277 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
 278 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
 279 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
 280 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
 281 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
 282 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
 283 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
 284 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
 285 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
 286 kernel developers as
 287 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
 288 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
 289 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
 290 Lenovo forums, both for
 291 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
 292 2012-11-10</a> and for
 293 <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
 294 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
 295 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
 296 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
 297 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
 298 There is even a
 299 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
 300 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
 301 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
 302
 303 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
 304 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
 305 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
 306 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
 307 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
 308 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
 309 fixed. :)</p>
 310
 311       </div>
 312       <div class="tags">
 313
 314
 315         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>.
 316
 317
 318       </div>
 319     </div>
 320     <div class="padding"></div>
 321
 322     <div class="entry">
 323       <div class="title">
 324         <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>
 325       </div>
 326       <div class="date">
 327          4th July 2013
 328       </div>
 329       <div class="body">
 330         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
 331 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
 332 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
 333 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
 334 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
 335 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
 336 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
 337 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
 338 with an expencive door stop.</p>
 339
 340 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 341 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 342 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 343 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 344 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 345 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
 346 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
 347
 348 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
 349 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
 350 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
 351 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
 352 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
 353 new laptop now. :)</p>
 354
 355 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
 356
 357       </div>
 358       <div class="tags">
 359
 360
 361         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>.
 362
 363
 364       </div>
 365     </div>
 366     <div class="padding"></div>
 367
 368     <div class="entry">
 369       <div class="title">
 370         <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>
 371       </div>
 372       <div class="date">
 373         25th June 2013
 374       </div>
 375       <div class="body">
 376         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
 377 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
 378 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
 379 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
 380 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
 381 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
 382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
 383 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
 384 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
 385 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
 386 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
 387
 388 <p><pre>
 389 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 390 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
 391 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
 392 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
 393 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
 394 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
 395 firmware-ipw2x00
 396 firmware-ipw2x00
 397 Preconfiguring packages ...
 398 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
 399 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
 400 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
 401 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
 402 #
 403 </pre></p>
 404
 405 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
 406 printed instead:</p>
 407
 408 <p><pre>
 409 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 410 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 411 #
 412 </pre></p>
 413
 414 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
 415 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
 416
 417 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
 418 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
 419 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
 420 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
 421 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
 422 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
 423 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
 424 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
 425 machine.</p>
 426
 427 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
 428 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
 429 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
 430 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
 431 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
 432 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
 433
 434       </div>
 435       <div class="tags">
 436
 437
 438         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>.
 439
 440
 441       </div>
 442     </div>
 443     <div class="padding"></div>
 444
 445     <div class="entry">
 446       <div class="title">
 447         <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>
 448       </div>
 449       <div class="date">
 450         11th June 2013
 451       </div>
 452       <div class="body">
 453         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
 454 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
 455 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
 456 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
 457 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
 458 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
 459 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
 460 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
 461 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
 462 i915 driver used by the
 463 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
 464 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
 465
 466 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
 467 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
 468 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
 469 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
 470 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
 471
 472 <pre>
 473 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
 474 update-initramfs -u -k all
 475 </pre>
 476
 477 <p>Since March 2012 there is
 478 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
 479 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
 480 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
 481 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
 482 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
 483 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
 484 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
 485 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
 486 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
 487 number.</p>
 488
 489 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
 490 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
 491
 492 <p><pre>
 493 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
 494     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
 495     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 496  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
 497  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
 498     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 499  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
 500     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 501  Latency: 0
 502  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
 503  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 504  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 505  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
 506  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 507  Capabilities: <access denied>
 508  Kernel driver in use: i915
 509 </pre></p>
 510
 511 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
 512
 513 <p><pre>
 514 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
 515        ...
 516         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
 517         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
 518        ...
 519 }
 520 </pre></p>
 521
 522 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
 523 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
 524 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
 525 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
 526 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
 527 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
 528 yet shown up in
 529 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
 530 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
 531 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
 532 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
 533 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
 534 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
 535
 536 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
 537 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
 538 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
 539 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
 540 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
 541 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
 542 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
 543 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
 544 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
 545 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
 546 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
 547 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
 548
 549       </div>
 550       <div class="tags">
 551
 552
 553         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>.
 554
 555
 556       </div>
 557     </div>
 558     <div class="padding"></div>
 559
 560     <div class="entry">
 561       <div class="title">
 562         <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>
 563       </div>
 564       <div class="date">
 565         27th May 2013
 566       </div>
 567       <div class="body">
 568         <p>Two days ago, I asked
 569 <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
 570 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
 571 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
 572 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
 573 and Windows 8.</p>
 574
 575 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
 576 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
 577 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
 578 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
 579 enough to tell.</p>
 580
 581 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
 582 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
 583 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
 584 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
 585 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
 586 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
 587 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
 588 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
 589 to follow.</p>
 590
 591 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
 592 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
 593 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
 594 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
 595 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
 596 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
 597 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
 598 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
 599
 600 <p>I've updated the
 601 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
 602 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
 603 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
 604 machine.</p>
 605
 606 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
 607 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
 608
 609       </div>
 610       <div class="tags">
 611
 612
 613         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>.
 614
 615
 616       </div>
 617     </div>
 618     <div class="padding"></div>
 619
 620     <div class="entry">
 621       <div class="title">
 622         <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>
 623       </div>
 624       <div class="date">
 625         25th May 2013
 626       </div>
 627       <div class="body">
 628         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
 629 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
 630 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
 631 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
 632 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
 633 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
 634
 635 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
 636 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
 637 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
 638 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
 639 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
 640 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
 641 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
 642 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
 643 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
 644 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
 645
 646 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
 647 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
 648 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
 649 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
 650 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
 651 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
 652
 653 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
 654 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
 655 on new Laptops?</p>
 656
 657       </div>
 658       <div class="tags">
 659
 660
 661         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>.
 662
 663
 664       </div>
 665     </div>
 666     <div class="padding"></div>
 667
 668     <div class="entry">
 669       <div class="title">
 670         <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>
 671       </div>
 672       <div class="date">
 673         17th May 2013
 674       </div>
 675       <div class="body">
 676         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
 677 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
 678 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
 679 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
 680 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
 681 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
 682 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
 683 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
 684 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
 685 donate some money</a>.
 686
 687 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
 688 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
 689 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
 690 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
 691 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
 692
 693 <p>The script,
 694 <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/>
 695 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
 696 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
 697 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
 698
 699 <ol>
 700
 701 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
 702 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
 703 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
 704     our configuration.</li>
 705 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
 706     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
 707     according to the profile specified in the config above,
 708     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
 709 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
 710     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
 711 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
 712
 713 </ol>
 714
 715 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
 716 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
 717 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
 718 the needed packages.</p>
 719
 720 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
 721 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
 722 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
 723 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
 724 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
 725 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
 726
 727 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
 728 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
 729 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
 730
 731 <p><pre>
 732 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
 733 DESKTOP="lxde"
 734 </pre></p>
 735
 736 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
 737 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
 738 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
 739 boot.</p>
 740
 741       </div>
 742       <div class="tags">
 743
 744
 745         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>.
 746
 747
 748       </div>
 749     </div>
 750     <div class="padding"></div>
 751
 752     <div class="entry">
 753       <div class="title">
 754         <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>
 755       </div>
 756       <div class="date">
 757         11th May 2013
 758       </div>
 759       <div class="body">
 760         <P>In January,
 761 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
 762 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
 763 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
 764 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
 765 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
 766 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
 767 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
 768 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
 769 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
 770 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
 771 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
 772 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
 773
 774 <p><table>
 775 <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>
 776 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
 777 <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>
 778 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
 779 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
 780 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
 781 <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>
 782 <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>
 783 <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>
 784 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
 785 </table></p>
 786
 787 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
 788 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
 789 available in experimental.</p>
 790
 791 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
 792 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
 793 for LEGO designers.</p>
 794
 795       </div>
 796       <div class="tags">
 797
 798
 799         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>.
 800
 801
 802       </div>
 803     </div>
 804     <div class="padding"></div>
 805
 806     <div class="entry">
 807       <div class="title">
 808         <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>
 809       </div>
 810       <div class="date">
 811          5th May 2013
 812       </div>
 813       <div class="body">
 814         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
 815 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
 816 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
 817 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
 818 soon.</p>
 819
 820 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
 821 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
 822 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
 823 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
 824 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
 825 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
 826 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
 827 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
 828 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
 829 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
 830 Edu.</a>
 831
 832 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
 833 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
 834 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
 835 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
 836 follow.<p>
 837
 838       </div>
 839       <div class="tags">
 840
 841
 842         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>.
 843
 844
 845       </div>
 846     </div>
 847     <div class="padding"></div>
 848
 849     <div class="entry">
 850       <div class="title">
 851         <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>
 852       </div>
 853       <div class="date">
 854          3rd April 2013
 855       </div>
 856       <div class="body">
 857         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 858 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 859 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 860 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 861
 862 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 863 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 864 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 865 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 866 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 867 BTS. :)</p>
 868
 869       </div>
 870       <div class="tags">
 871
 872
 873         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>.
 874
 875
 876       </div>
 877     </div>
 878     <div class="padding"></div>
 879
 880     <div class="entry">
 881       <div class="title">
 882         <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>
 883       </div>
 884       <div class="date">
 885          2nd February 2013
 886       </div>
 887       <div class="body">
 888         <p>My
 889 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
 890 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
 891 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
 892 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 893 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 894 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 895 version too.</p>
 896
 897 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 898 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 899 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 900 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 901 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
 902 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 903 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 904 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
 905
 906 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 907 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 908 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
 909 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 910 it. :)</p>
 911
 912 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 913 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 914 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 915
 916       </div>
 917       <div class="tags">
 918
 919
 920         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>.
 921
 922
 923       </div>
 924     </div>
 925     <div class="padding"></div>
 926
 927     <div class="entry">
 928       <div class="title">
 929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 930       </div>
 931       <div class="date">
 932         22nd January 2013
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="body">
 935         <p>Yesterday, I
 936 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 937 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 938 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 940 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 941 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 942 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 943 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 944 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 945 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 946 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 947 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 948 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 949
 950 <pre>
 951 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 952 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 953 </pre>
 954
 955 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 956 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 957 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 958 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 959
 960 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 961 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 962 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 963 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 964 word.</p>
 965
 966 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 967 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 968 process.</p>
 969
 970 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 971 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 972
 973       </div>
 974       <div class="tags">
 975
 976
 977         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>.
 978
 979
 980       </div>
 981     </div>
 982     <div class="padding"></div>
 983
 984     <div class="entry">
 985       <div class="title">
 986         <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>
 987       </div>
 988       <div class="date">
 989         21st January 2013
 990       </div>
 991       <div class="body">
 992         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 993 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 994 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 995 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 996 it, fetch the
 997 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 998 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 999 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1000 autostart script.</p>
1001
1002 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1003
1004 <ul>
1005
1006 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1007 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1008
1009 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1010 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1011 initially did.</li>
1012
1013 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1014 the APT database, a database
1015 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1016 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1017
1018 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1019 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1020 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1021 package or packages.</li>
1022
1023 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1024 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1025
1026 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1027 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
1028
1029 </ul>
1030
1031 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1032 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1033 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1034 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
1035
1036 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
1037 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
1038 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
1039 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
1040 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
1041
1042 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1043 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1044 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1045 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1046 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1047 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1048 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1049 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
1050
1051 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
1052 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1053 '<tt>svn checkout
1054 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1055 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
1056 devscripts package.</p>
1057
1058 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
1059 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1060 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1061 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
1062 instructions</a> for details.</p>
1063
1064       </div>
1065       <div class="tags">
1066
1067
1068         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>.
1069
1070
1071       </div>
1072     </div>
1073     <div class="padding"></div>
1074
1075     <div class="entry">
1076       <div class="title">
1077         <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>
1078       </div>
1079       <div class="date">
1080         19th January 2013
1081       </div>
1082       <div class="body">
1083         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1084 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1085 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1086 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1087 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1088 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1089 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1090 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1091 not a durable solution.
1092
1093 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1094 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
1095
1096 <ul>
1097
1098 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1099   than A4).</li>
1100 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
1101 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
1102 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
1103 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
1104 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1105 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1106 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1107 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1108 size).</li>
1109 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1110   X.org packages.</li>
1111 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1112   the time).
1113
1114 </ul>
1115
1116 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1117 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1118 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1119 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1120 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1121 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1122 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1123 still be useful.</p>
1124
1125 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1126 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
1127 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1128 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1129 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1130 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1131
1132       </div>
1133       <div class="tags">
1134
1135
1136         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>.
1137
1138
1139       </div>
1140     </div>
1141     <div class="padding"></div>
1142
1143     <div class="entry">
1144       <div class="title">
1145         <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>
1146       </div>
1147       <div class="date">
1148         18th January 2013
1149       </div>
1150       <div class="body">
1151         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1152 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1153 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1154 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1155 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1156 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1157 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1158
1159 <pre>
1160 #!/usr/bin/python
1161 import sys
1162 import apt
1163 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1164     cache = apt.Cache()
1165     cache.open(None)
1166     thepkgs = []
1167     for pkg in cache:
1168         version = pkg.candidate
1169         if version is None:
1170             version = pkg.installed
1171         if version is None:
1172             continue
1173         record = version.record
1174         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1175             continue
1176         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1177         for t in mime_types:
1178             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1179             if t == mimetype:
1180                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1181     return thepkgs
1182 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1183 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1184     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1185 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1186 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1187     print "  %s" %pkg
1188 </pre>
1189
1190 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1191
1192 <pre>
1193 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1194 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1195   gecko-mediaplayer
1196 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1197 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1198   browser-plugin-gnash
1199 %
1200 </pre>
1201
1202 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1203 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1204 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1205 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1206
1207 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1208 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1209 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1210 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
1211 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1212 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1213
1214       </div>
1215       <div class="tags">
1216
1217
1218         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>.
1219
1220
1221       </div>
1222     </div>
1223     <div class="padding"></div>
1224
1225     <div class="entry">
1226       <div class="title">
1227         <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>
1228       </div>
1229       <div class="date">
1230         16th January 2013
1231       </div>
1232       <div class="body">
1233         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1234 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1235 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1236 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1237 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1238 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1239 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1240 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1241
1242 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1243 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1244 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1245 can be found on the
1246 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1247 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1248 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1249 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1250 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1251
1252 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1253
1254 <pre>
1255   count MIME type
1256   ----- -----------------------
1257      32 text/plain
1258      30 audio/mpeg
1259      29 image/png
1260      28 image/jpeg
1261      27 application/ogg
1262      26 audio/x-mp3
1263      25 image/tiff
1264      25 image/gif
1265      22 image/bmp
1266      22 audio/x-wav
1267      20 audio/x-flac
1268      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1269      18 video/x-ms-asf
1270      18 audio/x-musepack
1271      18 audio/x-mpeg
1272      18 application/x-ogg
1273      17 video/mpeg
1274      17 audio/x-scpls
1275      17 audio/ogg
1276      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1277 </pre>
1278
1279 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1280
1281 <pre>
1282   count MIME type
1283   ----- -----------------------
1284      33 text/plain
1285      32 image/png
1286      32 image/jpeg
1287      29 audio/mpeg
1288      27 image/gif
1289      26 image/tiff
1290      26 application/ogg
1291      25 audio/x-mp3
1292      22 image/bmp
1293      21 audio/x-wav
1294      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1295      19 audio/x-mpeg
1296      18 video/mpeg
1297      18 audio/x-scpls
1298      18 audio/x-flac
1299      18 application/x-ogg
1300      17 video/x-ms-asf
1301      17 text/html
1302      17 audio/x-musepack
1303      16 image/x-xbitmap
1304 </pre>
1305
1306 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1307
1308 <pre>
1309   count MIME type
1310   ----- -----------------------
1311      31 text/plain
1312      31 image/png
1313      31 image/jpeg
1314      29 audio/mpeg
1315      28 application/ogg
1316      27 image/gif
1317      26 image/tiff
1318      26 audio/x-mp3
1319      23 audio/x-wav
1320      22 image/bmp
1321      21 audio/x-flac
1322      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1323      19 audio/x-mpeg
1324      18 video/x-ms-asf
1325      18 video/mpeg
1326      18 audio/x-scpls
1327      18 application/x-ogg
1328      17 audio/x-musepack
1329      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1330      16 video/x-msvideo
1331 </pre>
1332
1333 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1334 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1335 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1336 issues.</p>
1337
1338 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
1339 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
1340
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="tags">
1343
1344
1345         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>.
1346
1347
1348       </div>
1349     </div>
1350     <div class="padding"></div>
1351
1352     <div class="entry">
1353       <div class="title">
1354         <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>
1355       </div>
1356       <div class="date">
1357         15th January 2013
1358       </div>
1359       <div class="body">
1360         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
1361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
1362 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
1363 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
1364 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1365 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1366 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1367 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1368 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1369 packages.</p>
1370
1371 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1372 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1373 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1374 modalias.</p>
1375
1376 <p><blockquote>
1377 Package: package-name
1378 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
1379 </blockquote></p>
1380
1381 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1382 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
1383
1384 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1385 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
1386
1387 <p><blockquote>
1388 Package: cheese
1389 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
1390 </blockquote></p>
1391
1392 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1393 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
1394
1395 <p><blockquote>
1396 Package: pcmciautils
1397 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1398 </blockquote></p>
1399
1400 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1401 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
1402
1403 <p><blockquote>
1404 Package: colorhug-client
1405 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
1406 </blockquote></p>
1407
1408 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1409 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1410 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1411
1412 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1413 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1414 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1415 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1416 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
1417 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1418 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1419 Raring.</p>
1420
1421 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1422 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1423 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1424 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1425 try the
1426 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
1427 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1428 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1429 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
1430
1431 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1432 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
1433
1434 <p><blockquote>
1435 % ./hw-support-lookup
1436 <br>yubikey-personalization
1437 <br>%
1438 </blockquote></p>
1439
1440 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1441 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
1442
1443 <p><blockquote>
1444 % ./hw-support-lookup
1445 <br>pcmciautils
1446 <br>%
1447 </blockquote></p>
1448
1449 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1450 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1451 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
1452
1453 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1454 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1455 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1456 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1457 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1458 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1459 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1460 see if it work.</p>
1461
1462 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1463 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1464 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1465 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1466
1467       </div>
1468       <div class="tags">
1469
1470
1471         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>.
1472
1473
1474       </div>
1475     </div>
1476     <div class="padding"></div>
1477
1478     <div class="entry">
1479       <div class="title">
1480         <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>
1481       </div>
1482       <div class="date">
1483         14th January 2013
1484       </div>
1485       <div class="body">
1486         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1487 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1488 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1489 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1490 in
1491 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1492 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
1493
1494 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
1495
1496 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1497 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1498 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
1499 &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;,
1500 &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
1501 &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;.
1502
1503 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1504 this shell script:</p>
1505
1506 <pre>
1507 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1508 </pre>
1509
1510 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1511 using modinfo:</p>
1512
1513 <pre>
1514 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1515 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1516 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1517 %
1518 </pre>
1519
1520 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
1521
1522 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1523 Bridge memory controller:</p>
1524
1525 <p><blockquote>
1526 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1527 </blockquote></p>
1528
1529 <p>This represent these values:</p>
1530
1531 <pre>
1532  v   00008086  (vendor)
1533  d   00002770  (device)
1534  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1535  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1536  bc  06        (bus class)
1537  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1538  i   00        (interface)
1539 </pre>
1540
1541 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1542 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1543 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1544 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
1545
1546 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1547 means.</p>
1548
1549 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
1550
1551 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1552 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
1553
1554 <p><blockquote>
1555 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1556 </blockquote></p>
1557
1558 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
1559
1560 <pre>
1561  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1562  p    0001  (device product)
1563  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1564  dc     09  (device class)
1565  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1566  dp     00  (device protocol)
1567  ic     09  (interface class)
1568  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1569  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1570 </pre>
1571
1572 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1573 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1574 these alias entries show up:</p>
1575
1576 <p><blockquote>
1577 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1578 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1579 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1580 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1581 </blockquote></p>
1582
1583 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1584 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1585 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
1586
1587 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
1588
1589 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1590 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
1591
1592 <p><blockquote>
1593 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1594 </blockquote></p>
1595
1596 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1597
1598 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1599
1600 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1601 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1602 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1603
1604 <p><blockquote>
1605 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1606 </blockquote></p>
1607
1608 <p>The values present are</p>
1609
1610 <pre>
1611  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1612  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1613  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1614  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1615  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1616  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1617  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1618  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1619  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1620  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1621  ct   10             (chassis type)
1622  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1623 </pre>
1624
1625 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1626 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1627
1628 <pre>
1629   3 Desktop
1630   4 Low Profile Desktop
1631   5 Pizza Box
1632   6 Mini Tower
1633   7 Tower
1634   8 Portable
1635   9 Laptop
1636  10 Notebook
1637  11 Hand Held
1638  12 Docking Station
1639  13 All In One
1640  14 Sub Notebook
1641  15 Space-saving
1642  16 Lunch Box
1643  17 Main Server Chassis
1644  18 Expansion Chassis
1645  19 Sub Chassis
1646  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1647  21 Peripheral Chassis
1648  22 RAID Chassis
1649  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1650  24 Sealed-case PC
1651  25 Multi-system
1652  26 CompactPCI
1653  27 AdvancedTCA
1654  28 Blade
1655  29 Blade Enclosing
1656 </pre>
1657
1658 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1659 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1660 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1661
1662 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1663
1664 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1665 test machine:</p>
1666
1667 <p><blockquote>
1668 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1669 </blockquote></p>
1670
1671 <p>The values present are</p>
1672
1673 <pre>
1674   ty  01  (type)
1675   pr  00  (prototype)
1676   id  00  (id)
1677   ex  00  (extra)
1678 </pre>
1679
1680 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1681 the valid values are.</p>
1682
1683 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1684
1685 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1686 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1687 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1688 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1689 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1690 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1691 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1692
1693 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1694
1695 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1696 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1697
1698 <pre>
1699   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1700     echo "$id" ; \
1701     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1702   done
1703 </pre>
1704
1705 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1706 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1707
1708 <pre>
1709   acpi:ACPI0003:
1710     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1711   acpi:device:
1712   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1713   acpi:IBM0068:
1714     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1715     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1716     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1717     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1718   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1719     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1720     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1721     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1722   [...]
1723 </pre>
1724
1725 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1726 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1727 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1728 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1729
1730 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1731 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1732 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1733
1734       </div>
1735       <div class="tags">
1736
1737
1738         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>.
1739
1740
1741       </div>
1742     </div>
1743     <div class="padding"></div>
1744
1745     <div class="entry">
1746       <div class="title">
1747         <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>
1748       </div>
1749       <div class="date">
1750         10th January 2013
1751       </div>
1752       <div class="body">
1753         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1754 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1755 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1756 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1757 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1758 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1759 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1760 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1761 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1762 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1763 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1764 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1765 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1766 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1767 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1768 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1769 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1770 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1771
1772       </div>
1773       <div class="tags">
1774
1775
1776         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>.
1777
1778
1779       </div>
1780     </div>
1781     <div class="padding"></div>
1782
1783     <div class="entry">
1784       <div class="title">
1785         <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>
1786       </div>
1787       <div class="date">
1788          9th January 2013
1789       </div>
1790       <div class="body">
1791         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1792 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1793 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1794 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1795 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1796 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1797 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1798 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1799 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1800 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1801 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1802
1803 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1804 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1805 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1806 simple:
1807
1808 <ul>
1809
1810 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1811   starting when a user log in.</li>
1812
1813 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1814   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1815
1816 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1817   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1818   packages.</li>
1819
1820 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1821   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1822
1823 </ul>
1824
1825 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1826 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1827 discover database to find packages and
1828 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1829 packages.</p>
1830
1831 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1832 draft package is now checked into
1833 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1834 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1835 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1836 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1837 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1838 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1839 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1840 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1841 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1842 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1843 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1844 because of the freeze).</p>
1845
1846 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1847 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1848 inserted):</p>
1849
1850 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1851
1852 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1853 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1854 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1855
1856 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1857 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1858 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1859 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1860 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1861 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1862 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1863
1864 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1865 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1866 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1867 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1868 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1869 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1870 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1871 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1872 not be installed?</p>
1873
1874 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1875 please send me an email. :)</p>
1876
1877       </div>
1878       <div class="tags">
1879
1880
1881         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>.
1882
1883
1884       </div>
1885     </div>
1886     <div class="padding"></div>
1887
1888     <div class="entry">
1889       <div class="title">
1890         <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>
1891       </div>
1892       <div class="date">
1893          2nd January 2013
1894       </div>
1895       <div class="body">
1896         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1897 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1898 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1899 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1900 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1901 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1902 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1903 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1904 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1905 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1906
1907 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1908 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1909 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
1910
1911       </div>
1912       <div class="tags">
1913
1914
1915         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>.
1916
1917
1918       </div>
1919     </div>
1920     <div class="padding"></div>
1921
1922     <div class="entry">
1923       <div class="title">
1924         <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>
1925       </div>
1926       <div class="date">
1927         25th December 2012
1928       </div>
1929       <div class="body">
1930         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1931 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1932
1933 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1934 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1935 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1936 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1937 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1938 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1939 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1940 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1941 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1942 name.</p>
1943
1944 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1945 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1946 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1947
1948 <blockquote><pre>
1949 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1950 cd bitcoin
1951 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1952 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1953 </pre></blockquote>
1954
1955 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1956 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1957 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1958 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1959 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1960 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1961 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1962 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1963 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1964
1965 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1966 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1967 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1968
1969       </div>
1970       <div class="tags">
1971
1972
1973         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>.
1974
1975
1976       </div>
1977     </div>
1978     <div class="padding"></div>
1979
1980     <div class="entry">
1981       <div class="title">
1982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1983       </div>
1984       <div class="date">
1985         21st December 2012
1986       </div>
1987       <div class="body">
1988         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1989 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1990 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1991 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1992 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1993 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1994 is now maintained by a
1995 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1996 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1997 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1998 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1999 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2000 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2001 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2002 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2003 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2004 Corallo in a
2005 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2006 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2007 Debian package.</p>
2008
2009 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2010 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2011 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2012 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2013 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2014 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2015 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2016 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2017 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2018 new version to unstable.
2019
2020 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2021 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2022 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2023 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2024 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2025 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2026 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2027 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
2028 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2029 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2030 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
2031 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2032 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2033 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
2034 have not tested them.</p>
2035
2036 <p>My
2037 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
2038 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2039 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2040 years ago, as can be
2041 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
2042 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
2043 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2044 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2045 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
2046 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2047 the same address as last time,
2048 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2049
2050       </div>
2051       <div class="tags">
2052
2053
2054         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>.
2055
2056
2057       </div>
2058     </div>
2059     <div class="padding"></div>
2060
2061     <div class="entry">
2062       <div class="title">
2063         <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>
2064       </div>
2065       <div class="date">
2066          7th September 2012
2067       </div>
2068       <div class="body">
2069         <p>As I
2070 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2071 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2072 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2073 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2074 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2075
2076 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2077 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2078 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2079 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2080
2081 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2082 PostScript formats at
2083 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2084 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2085
2086       </div>
2087       <div class="tags">
2088
2089
2090         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>.
2091
2092
2093       </div>
2094     </div>
2095     <div class="padding"></div>
2096
2097     <div class="entry">
2098       <div class="title">
2099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
2100       </div>
2101       <div class="date">
2102         16th August 2012
2103       </div>
2104       <div class="body">
2105         <p>I dag fyller
2106 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
2107 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
2108 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
2109
2110       </div>
2111       <div class="tags">
2112
2113
2114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
2115
2116
2117       </div>
2118     </div>
2119     <div class="padding"></div>
2120
2121     <div class="entry">
2122       <div class="title">
2123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2124       </div>
2125       <div class="date">
2126         24th June 2012
2127       </div>
2128       <div class="body">
2129         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2130 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
2131 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
2132 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2133 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2134 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
2135 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2136 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2137 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
2138 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
2139 missing in my book.</p>
2140
2141 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2142 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2143 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2144 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
2145 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
2146 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
2147 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
2148
2149       </div>
2150       <div class="tags">
2151
2152
2153         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>.
2154
2155
2156       </div>
2157     </div>
2158     <div class="padding"></div>
2159
2160     <div class="entry">
2161       <div class="title">
2162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
2163       </div>
2164       <div class="date">
2165         21st November 2011
2166       </div>
2167       <div class="body">
2168         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
2169 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
2170 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
2171 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
2172 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
2173 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
2174 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
2175 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
2176 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
2177 the tools to do so.</p>
2178
2179 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
2180 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
2181 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
2182 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
2183
2184 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
2185 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
2186 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
2187 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
2188 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
2189 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
2190 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
2191 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
2192
2193 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
2194 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
2195 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
2196
2197 <p><pre>
2198 #!/usr/bin/perl
2199 use strict;
2200 use warnings;
2201 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
2202 BEGIN {
2203     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
2204     my %rhelmodules = (
2205         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
2206         );
2207     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
2208         eval "use $module;";
2209         if ($@) {
2210             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
2211             system("yum install -y $pkg");
2212             eval "use $module;";
2213         }
2214     }
2215 }
2216 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
2217
2218 upgrade_dell();
2219
2220 exit 0;
2221
2222 sub run_firmware_script {
2223     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
2224     unless ($script) {
2225         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
2226         exit 1
2227     }
2228     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
2229
2230     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
2231         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
2232     } else {
2233         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
2234     }
2235 }
2236
2237 sub run_firmware_scripts {
2238     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
2239     # Run firmware packages
2240     for my $dir (@dirs) {
2241         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
2242         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
2243         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
2244             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
2245             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
2246         }
2247         closedir $dh;
2248     }
2249 }
2250
2251 sub download {
2252     my $url = shift;
2253     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
2254     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
2255 }
2256
2257 sub upgrade_dell {
2258     my @dirs;
2259     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2260     chomp $product;
2261
2262     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
2263
2264         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
2265         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
2266
2267         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
2268             CLEANUP => 1
2269             );
2270         chdir($tmpdir);
2271         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
2272         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
2273         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
2274         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
2275         my $fwopts = "-q";
2276         if (@paths) {
2277             for my $url (@paths) {
2278                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
2279             }
2280             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
2281         } else {
2282             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2283             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2284         }
2285         chdir('/');
2286     } else {
2287         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2288         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2289     }
2290 }
2291
2292 sub fetch_dell_fw {
2293     my $path = shift;
2294     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
2295     download($url);
2296 }
2297
2298 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
2299 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
2300 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
2301 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
2302     my $filename = shift;
2303
2304     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2305     chomp $product;
2306     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
2307
2308     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
2309
2310     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
2311     my @paths;
2312     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
2313         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
2314         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
2315         my $oscode;
2316         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
2317             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
2318         } else {
2319             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
2320         }
2321         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
2322         {
2323             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
2324         }
2325     }
2326     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
2327         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
2328
2329         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
2330         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
2331
2332         my $cpath = $component->{path};
2333         for my $path (@paths) {
2334             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
2335                 push(@paths, $cpath);
2336             }
2337         }
2338     }
2339     return @paths;
2340 }
2341 </pre>
2342
2343 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
2344 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
2345 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
2346 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
2347 outdated.</p>
2348
2349       </div>
2350       <div class="tags">
2351
2352
2353         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>.
2354
2355
2356       </div>
2357     </div>
2358     <div class="padding"></div>
2359
2360     <div class="entry">
2361       <div class="title">
2362         <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>
2363       </div>
2364       <div class="date">
2365          4th August 2011
2366       </div>
2367       <div class="body">
2368         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
2369 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
2370 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
2371 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
2372 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
2373 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
2374 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
2375 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
2376 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
2377
2378 <p><blockquote>
2379 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
2380 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
2381 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
2382 </blockquote></p>
2383
2384 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
2385 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
2386 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
2387 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
2388 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
2389 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
2390 hard to explain.</p>
2391
2392 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
2393 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
2394 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
2395 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
2396 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
2397 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
2398 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
2399 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
2400 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
2401 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
2402 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
2403 mode).</p>
2404
2405 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
2406 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
2407 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
2408 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
2409 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
2410 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
2411 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
2412 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
2413 after visiting single user mode.</p>
2414
2415 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
2416 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
2417 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
2418 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
2419 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
2420 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
2421 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
2422 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
2423
2424 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
2425 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
2426 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
2427
2428       </div>
2429       <div class="tags">
2430
2431
2432         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>.
2433
2434
2435       </div>
2436     </div>
2437     <div class="padding"></div>
2438
2439     <div class="entry">
2440       <div class="title">
2441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
2442       </div>
2443       <div class="date">
2444         30th July 2011
2445       </div>
2446       <div class="body">
2447         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
2448 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
2449 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
2450 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
2451 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
2452 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
2453 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
2454 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
2455 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
2456 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
2457 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
2458 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
2459 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
2460
2461 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
2462 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
2463 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
2464 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
2465 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
2466 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
2467 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
2468 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
2469 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
2470
2471 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
2472 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
2473 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
2474 is presented.</p>
2475
2476 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
2477 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
2478 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
2479 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
2480 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
2481 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
2482 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
2483 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
2484 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
2485 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
2486 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
2487 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
2488 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
2489 find time to push this forward.</p>
2490
2491       </div>
2492       <div class="tags">
2493
2494
2495         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>.
2496
2497
2498       </div>
2499     </div>
2500     <div class="padding"></div>
2501
2502     <div class="entry">
2503       <div class="title">
2504         <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>
2505       </div>
2506       <div class="date">
2507         29th July 2011
2508       </div>
2509       <div class="body">
2510         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
2511 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
2512 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
2513 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
2514 issues.</p>
2515
2516 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
2517 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
2518 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
2519
2520 <ol>
2521
2522 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
2523 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
2524 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
2525 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
2526 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
2527 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
2528 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
2529 Debian.</li>
2530
2531 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
2532 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
2533 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
2534 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
2535 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
2536 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
2537 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
2538 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
2539 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
2540 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
2541 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
2542 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
2543 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
2544
2545 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
2546 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
2547 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
2548 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
2549 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
2550 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
2551 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
2552 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
2553 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
2554 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
2555
2556 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
2557 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
2558 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
2559 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
2560 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
2561 latter behaviour.</li>
2562
2563 </ol>
2564
2565 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
2566 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
2567 it do not matter much.</p>
2568
2569 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
2570 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
2571 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
2572
2573       </div>
2574       <div class="tags">
2575
2576
2577         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>.
2578
2579
2580       </div>
2581     </div>
2582     <div class="padding"></div>
2583
2584     <div class="entry">
2585       <div class="title">
2586         <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>
2587       </div>
2588       <div class="date">
2589         26th July 2011
2590       </div>
2591       <div class="body">
2592         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
2593 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
2594 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
2595 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
2596 security support for a few years.</p>
2597
2598 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
2599 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
2600 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
2601 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
2602 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
2603 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
2604 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
2605 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
2606 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
2607 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
2608 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
2609 easier in the future.</p>
2610
2611 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
2612 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
2613 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
2614 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
2615 do not have time for.</p>
2616
2617       </div>
2618       <div class="tags">
2619
2620
2621         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>.
2622
2623
2624       </div>
2625     </div>
2626     <div class="padding"></div>
2627
2628     <div class="entry">
2629       <div class="title">
2630         <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>
2631       </div>
2632       <div class="date">
2633          3rd April 2011
2634       </div>
2635       <div class="body">
2636         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
2637 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
2638 update in English.</p>
2639
2640 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
2641 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
2642 of the British service
2643 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
2644 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
2645 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
2646 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
2647 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
2648 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
2649 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
2650 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
2651 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
2652 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
2653 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
2654 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
2655 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
2656
2657 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
2658 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
2659 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
2660 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
2661 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
2662 public infrastructure.</p>
2663
2664 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
2665 such service?</p>
2666
2667       </div>
2668       <div class="tags">
2669
2670
2671         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>.
2672
2673
2674       </div>
2675     </div>
2676     <div class="padding"></div>
2677
2678     <div class="entry">
2679       <div class="title">
2680         <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>
2681       </div>
2682       <div class="date">
2683         28th January 2011
2684       </div>
2685       <div class="body">
2686         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
2687 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
2688 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
2689 available on the Internet, and check our locally
2690 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
2691 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
2692 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
2693 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
2694 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
2695 out which security holes were present in our free software
2696 collection.</p>
2697
2698 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
2699 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
2700 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
2701 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
2702 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
2703 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
2704 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
2705 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
2706 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
2707 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
2708 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
2709 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
2710 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
2711 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
2712 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
2713 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
2714
2715 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
2716 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
2717 check out, one could look up
2718 <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
2719 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
2720 The most recent one is
2721 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
2722 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
2723 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
2724
2725 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
2726 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
2727 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
2728 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
2729 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
2730 security issues out.</p>
2731
2732 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
2733 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
2734 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
2735 RHEL is providing
2736 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
2737 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
2738 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
2739
2740 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
2741 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
2742 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
2743 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
2744 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
2745 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
2746 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
2747 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
2748 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
2749 established soon.</p>
2750
2751 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
2752 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
2753 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
2754 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
2755 for their packages.</p>
2756
2757       </div>
2758       <div class="tags">
2759
2760
2761         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>.
2762
2763
2764       </div>
2765     </div>
2766     <div class="padding"></div>
2767
2768     <div class="entry">
2769       <div class="title">
2770         <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>
2771       </div>
2772       <div class="date">
2773         23rd January 2011
2774       </div>
2775       <div class="body">
2776         <p>In the
2777 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
2778 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
2779 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
2780 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
2781 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
2782 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
2783 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
2784 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
2785 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
2786 one of my machines like this:</p>
2787
2788 <pre>
2789 loaded modules:
2790 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
2791 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
2792 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
2793 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
2794 10de:03ec pata_amd
2795 10de:03f6 sata_nv
2796 1022:1103 k8temp
2797 109e:036e bttv
2798 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
2799 11ab:4364 sky2
2800 </pre>
2801
2802 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
2803 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
2804
2805 <pre>
2806 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
2807     echo loaded pci modules:
2808     (
2809         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
2810         for address in * ; do
2811             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2812                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2813                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2814                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2815                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
2816                     echo "$id $module"
2817                 fi
2818             fi
2819         done
2820     )
2821     echo
2822 fi
2823 </pre>
2824
2825 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
2826 mappings:</p>
2827
2828 <pre>
2829 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
2830     echo loaded usb modules:
2831     (
2832         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
2833         for address in * ; do
2834             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2835                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2836                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2837                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2838                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
2839                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
2840                         echo "$id $module"
2841                     fi
2842                 fi
2843             fi
2844         done
2845     )
2846     echo
2847 fi
2848 </pre>
2849
2850 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
2851 well.</p>
2852
2853       </div>
2854       <div class="tags">
2855
2856
2857         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>.
2858
2859
2860       </div>
2861     </div>
2862     <div class="padding"></div>
2863
2864     <div class="entry">
2865       <div class="title">
2866         <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>
2867       </div>
2868       <div class="date">
2869         22nd December 2010
2870       </div>
2871       <div class="body">
2872         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
2873 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
2874 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
2875 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
2876 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
2877 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
2878 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
2879 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
2880 university.</p>
2881
2882 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
2883 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
2884 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
2885 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
2886 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
2887 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
2888 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
2889 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
2890
2891 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
2892 I perform on a new model.</p>
2893
2894 <ul>
2895
2896 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
2897 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
2898 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
2899
2900 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
2901 installation, X.org is working.</li>
2902
2903 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
2904 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
2905 reported by the program.</li>
2906
2907 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
2908 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
2909 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
2910 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
2911 normally test this by playing
2912 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
2913 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
2914
2915 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
2916 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2917
2918 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
2919 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2920
2921 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
2922 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
2923
2924 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
2925 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
2926 few.</li>
2927
2928 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
2929 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
2930 notice this.</li>
2931
2932 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
2933 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
2934 resume.</li>
2935
2936 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
2937 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
2938 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
2939 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
2940 not.</li>
2941
2942 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
2943 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
2944 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
2945 existence.</li>
2946
2947 </ul>
2948
2949 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
2950 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
2951 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
2952 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
2953 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
2954 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
2955 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
2956 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
2957
2958       </div>
2959       <div class="tags">
2960
2961
2962         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>.
2963
2964
2965       </div>
2966     </div>
2967     <div class="padding"></div>
2968
2969     <div class="entry">
2970       <div class="title">
2971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
2972       </div>
2973       <div class="date">
2974         11th December 2010
2975       </div>
2976       <div class="body">
2977         <p>As I continue to explore
2978 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
2979 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
2980 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
2981
2982 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
2983 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
2984 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
2985 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
2986 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
2987 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
2988 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
2989 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
2990 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
2991 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
2992 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
2993 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
2994 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
2995 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
2996 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
2997 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
2998 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
2999 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
3000 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3001 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
3002
3003 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3004 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3005 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3006 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3007 If the Skolelinux foundation
3008 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
3009 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3010 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3011 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
3012 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
3013 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
3014 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3015 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
3016
3017 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3018 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
3019 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3020 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3021 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
3022 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3023 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
3024 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3025 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
3026 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
3027 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
3028 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
3029 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
3030 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
3031 currencies.</p>
3032
3033 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
3034 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
3035 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
3036 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
3037 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
3038 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
3039 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
3040 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
3041 BitCoins.  Check out
3042 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
3043 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
3044 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
3045 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
3046 yet.</p>
3047
3048 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
3049 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
3050 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
3051 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
3052 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
3053
3054       </div>
3055       <div class="tags">
3056
3057
3058         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>.
3059
3060
3061       </div>
3062     </div>
3063     <div class="padding"></div>
3064
3065     <div class="entry">
3066       <div class="title">
3067         <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>
3068       </div>
3069       <div class="date">
3070         10th December 2010
3071       </div>
3072       <div class="body">
3073         <p>With this weeks lawless
3074 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
3075 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
3076 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
3077 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
3078 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
3079 A blog post from
3080 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
3081 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
3082 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
3083 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
3084 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
3085 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
3086 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
3087
3088 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
3089 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
3090 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
3091 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
3092 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
3093 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
3094 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
3095 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
3096 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
3097 Debian</a> soon.</p>
3098
3099 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
3100 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
3101 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
3102 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
3103 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
3104 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
3105 you can even get
3106 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
3107 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
3108 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
3109 on the current exchange rates.</p>
3110
3111 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
3112 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
3113 donations to the address
3114 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
3115
3116       </div>
3117       <div class="tags">
3118
3119
3120         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>.
3121
3122
3123       </div>
3124     </div>
3125     <div class="padding"></div>
3126
3127     <div class="entry">
3128       <div class="title">
3129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
3130       </div>
3131       <div class="date">
3132         27th November 2010
3133       </div>
3134       <div class="body">
3135         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
3136 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
3137 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
3138 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
3139 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
3140 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
3141 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
3142 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
3143
3144 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
3145 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3146 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
3147 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
3148 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
3149 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
3150 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
3151 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
3152 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
3153 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
3154 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
3155
3156 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
3157 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
3158 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
3159 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
3160 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
3161 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
3162 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
3163 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
3164 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
3165 what is going on.</p>
3166
3167       </div>
3168       <div class="tags">
3169
3170
3171         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>.
3172
3173
3174       </div>
3175     </div>
3176     <div class="padding"></div>
3177
3178     <div class="entry">
3179       <div class="title">
3180         <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>
3181       </div>
3182       <div class="date">
3183         22nd November 2010
3184       </div>
3185       <div class="body">
3186         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
3187 upgrade testing of the
3188 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3189 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
3190 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
3191 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
3192
3193 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3194
3195 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3196
3197 <blockquote><p>
3198   apache2.2-bin
3199   aptdaemon
3200   baobab
3201   binfmt-support
3202   browser-plugin-gnash
3203   cheese-common
3204   cli-common
3205   cups-pk-helper
3206   dmz-cursor-theme
3207   empathy
3208   empathy-common
3209   freedesktop-sound-theme
3210   freeglut3
3211   gconf-defaults-service
3212   gdm-themes
3213   gedit-plugins
3214   geoclue
3215   geoclue-hostip
3216   geoclue-localnet
3217   geoclue-manual
3218   geoclue-yahoo
3219   gnash
3220   gnash-common
3221   gnome
3222   gnome-backgrounds
3223   gnome-cards-data
3224   gnome-codec-install
3225   gnome-core
3226   gnome-desktop-environment
3227   gnome-disk-utility
3228   gnome-screenshot
3229   gnome-search-tool
3230   gnome-session-canberra
3231   gnome-system-log
3232   gnome-themes-extras
3233   gnome-themes-more
3234   gnome-user-share
3235   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3236   gstreamer0.10-tools
3237   gtk2-engines
3238   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3239   gtk2-engines-smooth
3240   hamster-applet
3241   libapache2-mod-dnssd
3242   libapr1
3243   libaprutil1
3244   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
3245   libaprutil1-ldap
3246   libart2.0-cil
3247   libboost-date-time1.42.0
3248   libboost-python1.42.0
3249   libboost-thread1.42.0
3250   libchamplain-0.4-0
3251   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
3252   libcheese-gtk18
3253   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3254   libcryptui0
3255   libdiscid0
3256   libelf1
3257   libepc-1.0-2
3258   libepc-common
3259   libepc-ui-1.0-2
3260   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3261   libfreerdp0
3262   libgconf2.0-cil
3263   libgdata-common
3264   libgdata7
3265   libgdu-gtk0
3266   libgee2
3267   libgeoclue0
3268   libgexiv2-0
3269   libgif4
3270   libglade2.0-cil
3271   libglib2.0-cil
3272   libgmime2.4-cil
3273   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3274   libgnome2.24-cil
3275   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
3276   libgpod-common
3277   libgpod4
3278   libgtk2.0-cil
3279   libgtkglext1
3280   libgtksourceview2.0-common
3281   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3282   libmono-addins0.2-cil
3283   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
3284   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3285   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
3286   libmono-posix2.0-cil
3287   libmono-security2.0-cil
3288   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3289   libmono-system2.0-cil
3290   libmtp8
3291   libmusicbrainz3-6
3292   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
3293   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
3294   libopal3.6.8
3295   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
3296   libpt2.6.7
3297   libpython2.6
3298   librpm1
3299   librpmio1
3300   libsdl1.2debian
3301   libsrtp0
3302   libssh-4
3303   libtelepathy-farsight0
3304   libtelepathy-glib0
3305   libtidy-0.99-0
3306   media-player-info
3307   mesa-utils
3308   mono-2.0-gac
3309   mono-gac
3310   mono-runtime
3311   nautilus-sendto
3312   nautilus-sendto-empathy
3313   p7zip-full
3314   pkg-config
3315   python-aptdaemon
3316   python-aptdaemon-gtk
3317   python-axiom
3318   python-beautifulsoup
3319   python-bugbuddy
3320   python-clientform
3321   python-coherence
3322   python-configobj
3323   python-crypto
3324   python-cupshelpers
3325   python-elementtree
3326   python-epsilon
3327   python-evolution
3328   python-feedparser
3329   python-gdata
3330   python-gdbm
3331   python-gst0.10
3332   python-gtkglext1
3333   python-gtksourceview2
3334   python-httplib2
3335   python-louie
3336   python-mako
3337   python-markupsafe
3338   python-mechanize
3339   python-nevow
3340   python-notify
3341   python-opengl
3342   python-openssl
3343   python-pam
3344   python-pkg-resources
3345   python-pyasn1
3346   python-pysqlite2
3347   python-rdflib
3348   python-serial
3349   python-tagpy
3350   python-twisted-bin
3351   python-twisted-conch
3352   python-twisted-core
3353   python-twisted-web
3354   python-utidylib
3355   python-webkit
3356   python-xdg
3357   python-zope.interface
3358   remmina
3359   remmina-plugin-data
3360   remmina-plugin-rdp
3361   remmina-plugin-vnc
3362   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3363   rhythmbox-plugins
3364   rpm-common
3365   rpm2cpio
3366   seahorse-plugins
3367   shotwell
3368   software-center
3369   system-config-printer-udev
3370   telepathy-gabble
3371   telepathy-mission-control-5
3372   telepathy-salut
3373   tomboy
3374   totem
3375   totem-coherence
3376   totem-mozilla
3377   totem-plugins
3378   transmission-common
3379   xdg-user-dirs
3380   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
3381   xserver-xephyr
3382 </p></blockquote>
3383
3384 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3385
3386 <blockquote><p>
3387   cheese
3388   ekiga
3389   eog
3390   epiphany-extensions
3391   evolution-exchange
3392   fast-user-switch-applet
3393   file-roller
3394   gcalctool
3395   gconf-editor
3396   gdm
3397   gedit
3398   gedit-common
3399   gnome-games
3400   gnome-games-data
3401   gnome-nettool
3402   gnome-system-tools
3403   gnome-themes
3404   gnuchess
3405   gucharmap
3406   guile-1.8-libs
3407   libavahi-ui0
3408   libdmx1
3409   libgalago3
3410   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3411   libgtksourceview2.0-0
3412   liblircclient0
3413   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
3414   libspeexdsp1
3415   libsvga1
3416   rhythmbox
3417   seahorse
3418   sound-juicer
3419   system-config-printer
3420   totem-common
3421   transmission-gtk
3422   vinagre
3423   vino
3424 </p></blockquote>
3425
3426 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3427
3428 <blockquote><p>
3429   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3430 </p></blockquote>
3431
3432 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3433
3434 <blockquote><p>
3435 [nothing]
3436 </p></blockquote>
3437
3438 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3439
3440 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3441
3442 <blockquote><p>
3443   ksmserver
3444 </p></blockquote>
3445
3446 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3447
3448 <blockquote><p>
3449   kwin
3450   network-manager-kde
3451 </p></blockquote>
3452
3453 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3454
3455 <blockquote><p>
3456   arts
3457   dolphin
3458   freespacenotifier
3459   google-gadgets-gst
3460   google-gadgets-xul
3461   kappfinder
3462   kcalc
3463   kcharselect
3464   kde-core
3465   kde-plasma-desktop
3466   kde-standard
3467   kde-window-manager
3468   kdeartwork
3469   kdeartwork-emoticons
3470   kdeartwork-style
3471   kdeartwork-theme-icon
3472   kdebase
3473   kdebase-apps
3474   kdebase-workspace
3475   kdebase-workspace-bin
3476   kdebase-workspace-data
3477   kdeeject
3478   kdelibs
3479   kdeplasma-addons
3480   kdeutils
3481   kdewallpapers
3482   kdf
3483   kfloppy
3484   kgpg
3485   khelpcenter4
3486   kinfocenter
3487   konq-plugins-l10n
3488   konqueror-nsplugins
3489   kscreensaver
3490   kscreensaver-xsavers
3491   ktimer
3492   kwrite
3493   libgle3
3494   libkde4-ruby1.8
3495   libkonq5
3496   libkonq5-templates
3497   libnetpbm10
3498   libplasma-ruby
3499   libplasma-ruby1.8
3500   libqt4-ruby1.8
3501   marble-data
3502   marble-plugins
3503   netpbm
3504   nuvola-icon-theme
3505   plasma-dataengines-workspace
3506   plasma-desktop
3507   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
3508   plasma-runners-addons
3509   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
3510   plasma-scriptengine-python
3511   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
3512   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
3513   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
3514   plasma-scriptengines
3515   plasma-wallpapers-addons
3516   plasma-widget-folderview
3517   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3518   ruby
3519   sweeper
3520   update-notifier-kde
3521   xscreensaver-data-extra
3522   xscreensaver-gl
3523   xscreensaver-gl-extra
3524   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3525 </p></blockquote>
3526
3527 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3528
3529 <blockquote><p>
3530   ark
3531   google-gadgets-common
3532   google-gadgets-qt
3533   htdig
3534   kate
3535   kdebase-bin
3536   kdebase-data
3537   kdepasswd
3538   kfind
3539   klipper
3540   konq-plugins
3541   konqueror
3542   ksysguard
3543   ksysguardd
3544   libarchive1
3545   libcln6
3546   libeet1
3547   libeina-svn-06
3548   libggadget-1.0-0b
3549   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
3550   libgps19
3551   libkdecorations4
3552   libkephal4
3553   libkonq4
3554   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
3555   libkscreensaver5
3556   libksgrd4
3557   libksignalplotter4
3558   libkunitconversion4
3559   libkwineffects1a
3560   libmarblewidget4
3561   libntrack-qt4-1
3562   libntrack0
3563   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
3564   libplasmaclock4a
3565   libplasmagenericshell4
3566   libprocesscore4a
3567   libprocessui4a
3568   libqalculate5
3569   libqedje0a
3570   libqtruby4shared2
3571   libqzion0a
3572   libruby1.8
3573   libscim8c2a
3574   libsmokekdecore4-3
3575   libsmokekdeui4-3
3576   libsmokekfile3
3577   libsmokekhtml3
3578   libsmokekio3
3579   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
3580   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
3581   libsmokekparts3
3582   libsmokektexteditor3
3583   libsmokekutils3
3584   libsmokenepomuk3
3585   libsmokephonon3
3586   libsmokeplasma3
3587   libsmokeqtcore4-3
3588   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
3589   libsmokeqtgui4-3
3590   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
3591   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
3592   libsmokeqtscript4-3
3593   libsmokeqtsql4-3
3594   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
3595   libsmokeqttest4-3
3596   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3597   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3598   libsmokeqtxml4-3
3599   libsmokesolid3
3600   libsmokesoprano3
3601   libtaskmanager4a
3602   libtidy-0.99-0
3603   libweather-ion4a
3604   libxklavier16
3605   libxxf86misc1
3606   okteta
3607   oxygencursors
3608   plasma-dataengines-addons
3609   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3610   plasma-widget-lancelot
3611   plasma-widgets-addons
3612   plasma-widgets-workspace
3613   polkit-kde-1
3614   ruby1.8
3615   systemsettings
3616   update-notifier-common
3617 </p></blockquote>
3618
3619 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3620 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3621 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3622 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
3623
3624       </div>
3625       <div class="tags">
3626
3627
3628         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>.
3629
3630
3631       </div>
3632     </div>
3633     <div class="padding"></div>
3634
3635     <div class="entry">
3636       <div class="title">
3637         <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>
3638       </div>
3639       <div class="date">
3640         22nd November 2010
3641       </div>
3642       <div class="body">
3643         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
3644 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
3645 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
3646 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
3647 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
3648 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
3649 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
3650 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
3651 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
3652
3653 <p>I found
3654 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
3655 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
3656 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
3657 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
3658 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
3659 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
3660
3661 <pre>
3662 #!/bin/sh
3663
3664 # Based on
3665 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
3666
3667 set -e
3668 set -x
3669
3670 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
3671     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
3672     exit 1
3673 else
3674     host="$1"
3675 fi
3676
3677 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
3678     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
3679     exit 1
3680 fi
3681
3682 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
3683 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3684 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3685 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
3686
3687 img=$host.img
3688 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
3689 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
3690
3691 parted $img mklabel msdos
3692 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
3693 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
3694 parted $img set 1 boot on
3695
3696 modprobe dm-mod
3697 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
3698 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
3699
3700 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
3701 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
3702 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
3703
3704 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
3705 losetup -d /dev/loop0
3706 </pre>
3707
3708 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
3709 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
3710
3711 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
3712 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
3713 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
3714 seem to work just fine.</p>
3715
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="tags">
3718
3719
3720         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>.
3721
3722
3723       </div>
3724     </div>
3725     <div class="padding"></div>
3726
3727     <div class="entry">
3728       <div class="title">
3729         <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>
3730       </div>
3731       <div class="date">
3732         20th November 2010
3733       </div>
3734       <div class="body">
3735         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
3736 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3737 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
3738 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
3739
3740 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
3741 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
3742 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
3743
3744 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3745
3746 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3747
3748 <blockquote><p>
3749   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
3750   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
3751   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
3752   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
3753   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
3754   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
3755   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
3756   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
3757   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
3758   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
3759   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3760   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3761   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
3762   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
3763   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
3764   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
3765   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3766   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
3767   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3768   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
3769   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
3770   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3771   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
3772   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
3773   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
3774   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3775   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3776   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
3777   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3778   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
3779   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
3780   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3781   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
3782   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
3783   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
3784   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
3785   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
3786   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
3787   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
3788   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
3789   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
3790   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
3791   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
3792   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
3793   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
3794   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
3795   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
3796   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
3797   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
3798   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
3799   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
3800   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
3801   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3802   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
3803   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
3804   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
3805   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
3806   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
3807   zip
3808 </p></blockquote>
3809
3810 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
3811
3812 <blockquote><p>
3813   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
3814   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
3815   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
3816   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
3817   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
3818   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
3819   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
3820   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
3821   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
3822   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
3823   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
3824   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3825   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3826   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3827   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3828   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
3829   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3830   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
3831   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
3832   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
3833   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
3834   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
3835   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3836   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
3837   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
3838   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
3839   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
3840   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
3841   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
3842 </p></blockquote>
3843
3844 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3845
3846 <blockquote><p>
3847   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3848 </p></blockquote>
3849
3850 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3851
3852 <blockquote><p>
3853 [nothing]
3854 </p></blockquote>
3855
3856 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3857
3858 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3859
3860 <blockquote><p>
3861   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
3862   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3863   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
3864   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
3865   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
3866   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
3867   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3868   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
3869   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
3870   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3871   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
3872   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
3873   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
3874   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
3875   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
3876   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
3877   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
3878   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
3879   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
3880   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
3881   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
3882   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
3883   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
3884   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
3885   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
3886   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
3887   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
3888   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
3889   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
3890   ttf-sazanami-gothic
3891 </p></blockquote>
3892
3893 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3894
3895 <blockquote><p>
3896   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
3897   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
3898   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
3899   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
3900   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
3901   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
3902   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
3903   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
3904   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
3905   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
3906   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
3907   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
3908   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
3909   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
3910   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3911   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3912   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
3913   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
3914   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3915   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
3916   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3917   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
3918   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3919   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3920   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
3921   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
3922   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
3923   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
3924   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
3925   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
3926   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
3927   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
3928   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
3929 </p></blockquote>
3930
3931 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3932
3933 <blockquote><p>
3934   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
3935   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
3936   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
3937   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
3938   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3939   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
3940   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3941 </p></blockquote>
3942
3943 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3944
3945 <blockquote><p>
3946   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
3947 </p></blockquote>
3948
3949       </div>
3950       <div class="tags">
3951
3952
3953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3954
3955
3956       </div>
3957     </div>
3958     <div class="padding"></div>
3959
3960     <div class="entry">
3961       <div class="title">
3962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
3963       </div>
3964       <div class="date">
3965         20th November 2010
3966       </div>
3967       <div class="body">
3968         <p>Answering
3969 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
3970 call from the Gnash project</a> for
3971 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
3972 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
3973 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
3974 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
3975 releases out more often.</p>
3976
3977 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
3978 I have considered setting up a <a
3979 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
3980 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
3981 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
3982 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
3983 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
3984 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
3985 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
3986 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
3987 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
3988 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
3989 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
3990 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
3991
3992       </div>
3993       <div class="tags">
3994
3995
3996         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>.
3997
3998
3999       </div>
4000     </div>
4001     <div class="padding"></div>
4002
4003     <div class="entry">
4004       <div class="title">
4005         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
4006       </div>
4007       <div class="date">
4008          9th November 2010
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="body">
4011         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
4012
4013 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
4014 3D linked in from
4015 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
4016 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
4017
4018       </div>
4019       <div class="tags">
4020
4021
4022         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>.
4023
4024
4025       </div>
4026     </div>
4027     <div class="padding"></div>
4028
4029     <div class="entry">
4030       <div class="title">
4031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
4032       </div>
4033       <div class="date">
4034         24th October 2010
4035       </div>
4036       <div class="body">
4037         <p>Some updates.</p>
4038
4039 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
4040 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
4041 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
4042 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
4043 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
4044 :)</p>
4045
4046 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
4047 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
4048 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
4049 It is called
4050 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
4051 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
4052 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
4053 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
4054 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
4055 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
4056
4057 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
4058 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
4059 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
4060 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
4061 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
4062 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
4063 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
4064 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
4065 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
4066 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
4067
4068       </div>
4069       <div class="tags">
4070
4071
4072         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>.
4073
4074
4075       </div>
4076     </div>
4077     <div class="padding"></div>
4078
4079     <div class="entry">
4080       <div class="title">
4081         <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>
4082       </div>
4083       <div class="date">
4084          4th September 2010
4085       </div>
4086       <div class="body">
4087         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
4088 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
4089 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
4090 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
4091 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
4092 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
4093 installed.</p>
4094
4095 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
4096 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
4097 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
4098 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
4099 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4100 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
4101 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
4102 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
4103 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
4104
4105 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
4106 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
4107 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
4108 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
4109 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
4110 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
4111 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
4112 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
4113 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
4114 pages they want to visit.</p>
4115
4116 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
4117 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
4118 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
4119 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
4120 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
4121 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
4122 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
4123 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
4124 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
4125 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
4126 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
4127
4128       </div>
4129       <div class="tags">
4130
4131
4132         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>.
4133
4134
4135       </div>
4136     </div>
4137     <div class="padding"></div>
4138
4139     <div class="entry">
4140       <div class="title">
4141         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
4142       </div>
4143       <div class="date">
4144         27th July 2010
4145       </div>
4146       <div class="body">
4147         <p>I discovered this while doing
4148 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
4149 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
4150 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
4151 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
4152 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
4153
4154 <p>An example is from todays
4155 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
4156 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
4157 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
4158 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
4159 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
4160 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
4161 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
4162
4163 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
4164
4165 <blockquote><pre>
4166 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
4167  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
4168   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
4169 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
4170  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
4171 </pre></blockquote>
4172
4173 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
4174 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
4175 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
4176 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
4177 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
4178 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
4179 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
4180 of dependency loops.</p>
4181
4182 <p>Thanks to
4183 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
4184 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
4185 dependencies
4186 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
4187 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
4188
4189 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
4190 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
4191 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
4192 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
4193 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
4194 it.</p>
4195
4196       </div>
4197       <div class="tags">
4198
4199
4200         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>.
4201
4202
4203       </div>
4204     </div>
4205     <div class="padding"></div>
4206
4207     <div class="entry">
4208       <div class="title">
4209         <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>
4210       </div>
4211       <div class="date">
4212         17th July 2010
4213       </div>
4214       <div class="body">
4215         <p>This is a
4216 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
4217 on my
4218 <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
4219 work</a> on
4220 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
4221 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
4222
4223 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
4224 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
4225 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
4226 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
4227
4228 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
4229 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
4230 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
4231
4232 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
4233
4234 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
4235 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
4236 the web.
4237
4238 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
4239 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
4240 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
4241 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
4242 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
4243 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
4244
4245 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
4246 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
4247 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
4248 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
4249 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
4250 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
4251 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
4252 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
4253 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
4254 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
4255 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
4256 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
4257 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
4258 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
4259 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
4260 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
4261
4262 <blockquote><pre>
4263 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4264   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4265   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4266   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4267   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4268   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4269   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4270
4271 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4272   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4273   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
4274   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
4275   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
4276   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
4277 </pre></blockquote>
4278
4279 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
4280 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
4281 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
4282 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4283 also exist.</p>
4284
4285 <blockquote><pre>
4286 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4287 objectclass: top
4288 objectclass: dnsdomain
4289 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4290 dc: tjener
4291 arecord: 10.0.2.2
4292 associateddomain: tjener.intern
4293
4294 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4295 objectclass: top
4296 objectclass: dnsdomain2
4297 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4298 dc: 2
4299 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
4300 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
4301 </pre></blockquote>
4302
4303 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
4304 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
4305 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
4306 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
4307 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
4308 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
4309 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
4310 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
4311 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
4312 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
4313 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
4314 instead.</p>
4315
4316 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
4317 like this:</p>
4318
4319 <blockquote><pre>
4320 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4321   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4322   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4323   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4324   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4325   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4326
4327 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4328   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
4329 </pre></blockquote>
4330
4331 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
4332 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
4333 reverse lookups.</p>
4334
4335 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
4336 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
4337 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
4338 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
4339
4340 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
4341 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
4342 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
4343
4344 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
4345 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
4346 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
4347 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
4348 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
4349
4350 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
4351 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
4352 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
4353 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
4354 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
4355
4356 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
4357 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
4358 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
4359 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
4360 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
4361 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
4362
4363 <blockquote><pre>
4364 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
4365     SUP top
4366     AUXILIARY
4367     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
4368           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
4369           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
4370           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
4371           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
4372     ))
4373 </pre></blockquote>
4374
4375 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
4376 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
4377 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
4378 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
4379 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
4380 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
4381
4382 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
4383
4384 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
4385 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
4386 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
4387 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
4388 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
4389
4390 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
4391 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
4392 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
4393 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
4394
4395 <blockquote><pre>
4396 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
4397 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
4398 </pre></blockquote>
4399
4400 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
4401 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
4402 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
4403 search result is this entry:</p>
4404
4405 <blockquote><pre>
4406 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4407 cn: dhcp
4408 objectClass: top
4409 objectClass: dhcpServer
4410 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4411 </pre></blockquote>
4412
4413 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
4414 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
4415 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
4416 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
4417 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
4418 The search result is this entry:</p>
4419
4420 <blockquote><pre>
4421 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4422 cn: DHCP Config
4423 objectClass: top
4424 objectClass: dhcpService
4425 objectClass: dhcpOptions
4426 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4427 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
4428 dhcpStatements: authoritative
4429 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
4430 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
4431 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
4432 </pre></blockquote>
4433
4434 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
4435 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
4436 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
4437 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
4438 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
4439 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
4440 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
4441 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
4442 related computer objects.</p>
4443
4444 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
4445 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
4446 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
4447 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
4448 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
4449 like:</p>
4450
4451 <blockquote><pre>
4452 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4453 cn: hostname
4454 objectClass: top
4455 objectClass: dhcpHost
4456 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4457 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
4458 </pre></blockquote>
4459
4460 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
4461 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
4462 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
4463 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
4464 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
4465 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
4466 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
4467 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
4468 structural object class.
4469
4470 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
4471
4472 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
4473 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
4474 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
4475 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
4476 in the configuration.</p>
4477
4478 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
4479 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
4480 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
4481 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
4482 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
4483 structure.</p>
4484
4485 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
4486 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
4487
4488 <blockquote><pre>
4489 ou=services
4490   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
4491     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
4492     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4493       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4494         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4495     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4496       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4497         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4498     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
4499       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
4500 </pre></blockquote>
4501
4502 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
4503 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
4504 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
4505 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
4506
4507 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
4508 like this:</p>
4509
4510 <blockquote><pre>
4511 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4512 dc: hostname
4513 objectClass: top
4514 objectClass: dhcpHost
4515 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4516 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
4517 associateddomain: hostname.intern
4518 arecord: 10.11.12.13
4519 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4520 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
4521 </pre></blockquote>
4522
4523 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
4524 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
4525 auxiliary object class.</p>
4526
4527       </div>
4528       <div class="tags">
4529
4530
4531         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>.
4532
4533
4534       </div>
4535     </div>
4536     <div class="padding"></div>
4537
4538     <div class="entry">
4539       <div class="title">
4540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
4541       </div>
4542       <div class="date">
4543         14th July 2010
4544       </div>
4545       <div class="body">
4546         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
4547 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
4548 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
4549 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
4550 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
4551
4552 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
4553 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
4554
4555 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
4556 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
4557 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
4558 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
4559 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
4560 to a slave DNS server.</p>
4561
4562 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
4563 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
4564 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
4565 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
4566 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
4567 seem to work.</p>
4568
4569 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
4570 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
4571 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
4572 this:</p>
4573
4574 <blockquote><pre>
4575   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4576   cn: hostname
4577   objectClass: dhcphost
4578   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4579   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
4580   associateddomain: hostname.intern
4581   arecord: 10.11.12.13
4582   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4583   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
4584   ldapconfigsound: Y
4585 </pre></blockquote>
4586
4587 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
4588 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
4589 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
4590 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
4591
4592 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
4593 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
4594 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
4595 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
4596 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
4597 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
4598 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
4599 might be a good place to put it.</p>
4600
4601 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4602 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</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/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>.
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/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
4618       </div>
4619       <div class="date">
4620         11th July 2010
4621       </div>
4622       <div class="body">
4623         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
4624 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
4625 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
4626 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
4627
4628 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
4629 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
4630 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
4631 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
4632 LTSP clients.</p>
4633
4634 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
4635 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
4636 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
4637
4638 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
4639 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
4640 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
4641
4642 <blockquote><pre>
4643 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
4644 #
4645 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
4646 #
4647 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
4648 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
4649 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
4650 #
4651 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
4652 # existence of attribute names.
4653 #
4654 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
4655 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
4656 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
4657 #
4658 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
4659 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
4660 #
4661 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
4662 #     SUP top
4663 #     AUXILIARY
4664 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
4665
4666 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
4667 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
4668     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
4669     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
4670         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
4671         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
4672             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
4673             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
4674             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
4675             # bass value on to clients
4676             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
4677         done
4678     done
4679 fi
4680 </pre></blockquote>
4681
4682 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
4683 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
4684 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
4685 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
4686 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
4687
4688 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4689 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4690
4691 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
4692 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
4693 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
4694 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
4695 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
4696 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
4697
4698       </div>
4699       <div class="tags">
4700
4701
4702         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>.
4703
4704
4705       </div>
4706     </div>
4707     <div class="padding"></div>
4708
4709     <div class="entry">
4710       <div class="title">
4711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4712       </div>
4713       <div class="date">
4714          9th July 2010
4715       </div>
4716       <div class="body">
4717         <p>Since
4718 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
4719 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
4720 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
4721 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
4722 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
4723 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
4724 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
4725 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
4726 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
4727 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
4728 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
4729 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
4730 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
4731
4732       </div>
4733       <div class="tags">
4734
4735
4736         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>.
4737
4738
4739       </div>
4740     </div>
4741     <div class="padding"></div>
4742
4743     <div class="entry">
4744       <div class="title">
4745         <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>
4746       </div>
4747       <div class="date">
4748          3rd July 2010
4749       </div>
4750       <div class="body">
4751         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
4752 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
4753 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
4754 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
4755 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
4756 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
4757 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
4758 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
4759
4760 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
4761 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
4762 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
4763 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
4764 publish the difference.</p>
4765
4766 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4767
4768 <blockquote><p>
4769   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4770   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
4771   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
4772   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4773   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
4774   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4775   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
4776   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
4777 </p></blockquote>
4778
4779 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4780
4781 <blockquote><p>
4782   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
4783   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
4784   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
4785   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
4786   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
4787   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
4788   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4789   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4790   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4791   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4792   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
4793   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
4794   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
4795   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
4796   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
4797   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4798   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
4799   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
4800   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
4801   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
4802 </p></blockquote>
4803
4804 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4805
4806 <blockquote><p>
4807   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
4808   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
4809   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4810   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4811   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
4812   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
4813   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
4814   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4815   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4816   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4817   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4818   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
4819   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
4820   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
4821   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
4822   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
4823   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
4824   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
4825   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
4826   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
4827   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
4828 </p></blockquote>
4829
4830 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4831
4832 <blockquote><p>
4833   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
4834   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
4835   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
4836 </p></blockquote>
4837
4838 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
4839 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
4840 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
4841 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
4842 the difference somewhat.
4843
4844       </div>
4845       <div class="tags">
4846
4847
4848         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>.
4849
4850
4851       </div>
4852     </div>
4853     <div class="padding"></div>
4854
4855     <div class="entry">
4856       <div class="title">
4857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4858       </div>
4859       <div class="date">
4860         28th June 2010
4861       </div>
4862       <div class="body">
4863         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
4864 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
4865 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
4866 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
4867 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
4868 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
4869 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
4870 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
4871 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
4872 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
4873
4874 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
4875 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
4876 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
4877 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
4878 released.</p>
4879
4880 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
4881 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
4882 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
4883 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
4884
4885 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
4886 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4887
4888 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
4889 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
4890 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
4891 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
4892 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
4893
4894       </div>
4895       <div class="tags">
4896
4897
4898         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>.
4899
4900
4901       </div>
4902     </div>
4903     <div class="padding"></div>
4904
4905     <div class="entry">
4906       <div class="title">
4907         <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>
4908       </div>
4909       <div class="date">
4910         24th June 2010
4911       </div>
4912       <div class="body">
4913         <p>A while back, I
4914 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
4915 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
4916 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4917 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
4918
4919 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4920 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4921 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4922 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
4923
4924 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4925 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4926 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4927 Debian Edu.</p>
4928
4929 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4930 the
4931 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
4932 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4933 available today from IETF.</p>
4934
4935 <pre>
4936 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
4937 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
4938 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4939  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4940         NAME 'dhcpHost'
4941         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
4942 -       SUP top
4943 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
4944         MUST cn
4945         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4946         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
4947 </pre>
4948
4949 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4950 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4951 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
4952
4953 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4954 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4955
4956       </div>
4957       <div class="tags">
4958
4959
4960         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>.
4961
4962
4963       </div>
4964     </div>
4965     <div class="padding"></div>
4966
4967     <div class="entry">
4968       <div class="title">
4969         <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>
4970       </div>
4971       <div class="date">
4972         16th June 2010
4973       </div>
4974       <div class="body">
4975         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4976 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
4977 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4978 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4979 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4980 this:
4981
4982 <blockquote><pre>
4983 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4984 tasksel --new-install
4985 </pre></blockquote>
4986
4987 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4988 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4989 any output what so ever.
4990
4991 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4992 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4993 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4994 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4995 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4996 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
4997 code like this:
4998
4999 <blockquote><pre>
5000 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5001 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
5002 $cmd
5003 </pre></blockquote>
5004
5005 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
5006 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
5007 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
5008 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
5009 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
5010 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
5011 installation.</p>
5012
5013 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
5014 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
5015 like this.</p>
5016
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="tags">
5019
5020
5021         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>.
5022
5023
5024       </div>
5025     </div>
5026     <div class="padding"></div>
5027
5028     <div class="entry">
5029       <div class="title">
5030         <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>
5031       </div>
5032       <div class="date">
5033         13th June 2010
5034       </div>
5035       <div class="body">
5036         <p>My
5037 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
5038 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
5039 finally made the upgrade logs available from
5040 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
5041 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
5042 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
5043 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
5044
5045 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
5046 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
5047 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
5048 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
5049 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
5050 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
5051 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
5052 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
5053
5054 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
5055 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
5056 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
5057 too surprising.</p>
5058
5059 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
5060 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
5061 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
5062 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
5063 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
5064 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
5065 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
5066 continue.</p>
5067
5068 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
5069 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
5070   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
5071   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
5072   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
5073   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
5074   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
5075   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5076   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5077   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5078   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5079   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5080   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5081   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5082   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5083   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5084   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5085   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5086   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5087   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5088   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5089   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5090   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5091   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5092   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5093   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5094   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5095   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5096   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
5097   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
5098
5099 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
5100
5101 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
5102   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
5103   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
5104   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
5105   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5106   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
5107   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
5108   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
5109   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
5110   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
5111   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5112   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
5113   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5114   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
5115   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
5116   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
5117   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
5118   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
5119   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
5120   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
5121   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
5122   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
5123   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
5124   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
5125   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5126   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
5127   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
5128   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
5129   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
5130   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5131   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5132   zip</p>
5133
5134 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
5135
5136 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
5137   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
5138   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
5139   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
5140   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
5141   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
5142   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5143   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5144   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5145   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5146   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5147   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5148   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5149   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5150   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5151   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5152   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5153   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5154   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5155   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5156   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5157   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5158   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5159   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5160   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5161   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5162   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5163   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
5164
5165 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
5166 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
5167   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5168   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
5169   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
5170   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5171   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
5172   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
5173   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5174   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
5175   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
5176   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
5177   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
5178   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
5179   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
5180   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
5181   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
5182   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5183   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5184   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5185   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
5186   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5187   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
5188   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
5189   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5190   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5191   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
5192   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
5193   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
5194   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
5195   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
5196   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
5197   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
5198   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
5199   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
5200   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5201   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5202   xulrunner-1.9</p>
5203
5204
5205       </div>
5206       <div class="tags">
5207
5208
5209         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>.
5210
5211
5212       </div>
5213     </div>
5214     <div class="padding"></div>
5215
5216     <div class="entry">
5217       <div class="title">
5218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
5219       </div>
5220       <div class="date">
5221         11th June 2010
5222       </div>
5223       <div class="body">
5224         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
5225 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
5226 have been discovered and reported in the process
5227 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
5228 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
5229 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
5230 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
5231 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
5232
5233 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
5234 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
5235 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
5236 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
5237 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
5238 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
5239
5240 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
5241 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
5242 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5243 is created.  The bug report
5244 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
5245 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
5246 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
5247 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
5248 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
5249 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
5250 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
5251 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
5252 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
5253 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
5254 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
5255 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
5256 Debian Squeeze.</p>
5257
5258 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
5259 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
5260 trick:</p>
5261
5262 <blockquote><pre>
5263 #!/bin/sh
5264 set -ex
5265
5266 if [ "$1" ] ; then
5267     desktop=$1
5268 else
5269     desktop=gnome
5270 fi
5271
5272 from=lenny
5273 to=squeeze
5274
5275 exec &lt; /dev/null
5276 unset LANG
5277 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
5278 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
5279 fuser -mv .
5280 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
5281 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5282 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
5283 #!/bin/sh
5284 exit 101
5285 EOF
5286 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
5287 exit_cleanup() {
5288     umount $tmpdir/proc
5289 }
5290 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
5291 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
5292 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
5293
5294 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
5295
5296 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
5297 # to return the correct answers.
5298 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
5299     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
5300
5301 # Include the desktop and laptop task
5302 for test in desktop laptop ; do
5303     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
5304 #!/bin/sh
5305 exit 2
5306 EOF
5307     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
5308 done
5309
5310 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5311 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
5312 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
5313 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
5314
5315 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
5316 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5317 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5318 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
5319 fuser -mv
5320 </pre></blockquote>
5321
5322 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
5323 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
5324 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
5325 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
5326 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
5327 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
5328
5329 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
5330 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
5331 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
5332 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
5333 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
5334 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
5335 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
5336
5337 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
5338 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
5339 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
5340 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
5341 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
5342 packages.</p>
5343
5344       </div>
5345       <div class="tags">
5346
5347
5348         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>.
5349
5350
5351       </div>
5352     </div>
5353     <div class="padding"></div>
5354
5355     <div class="entry">
5356       <div class="title">
5357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
5358       </div>
5359       <div class="date">
5360          6th June 2010
5361       </div>
5362       <div class="body">
5363         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
5364 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
5365 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
5366 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
5367 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
5368 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
5369 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
5370
5371 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
5372 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
5373 COLUMNS):</p>
5374
5375 <blockquote><pre>
5376 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
5377 previous=N
5378 PREVLEVEL=
5379 RUNLEVEL=
5380 runlevel=S
5381 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
5382 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
5383 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
5384 </pre></blockquote>
5385
5386 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
5387 script.</p>
5388
5389 <blockquote><pre>
5390 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
5391 previous=N
5392 PREVLEVEL=N
5393 RUNLEVEL=S
5394 runlevel=S
5395 </pre></blockquote>
5396
5397 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
5398 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
5399 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
5400
5401 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
5402 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
5403 choice.</p>
5404
5405       </div>
5406       <div class="tags">
5407
5408
5409         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>.
5410
5411
5412       </div>
5413     </div>
5414     <div class="padding"></div>
5415
5416     <div class="entry">
5417       <div class="title">
5418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
5419       </div>
5420       <div class="date">
5421          6th June 2010
5422       </div>
5423       <div class="body">
5424         <p>Via the
5425 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
5426 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
5427 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
5428 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
5429 following the standards wars of today.</p>
5430
5431       </div>
5432       <div class="tags">
5433
5434
5435         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>.
5436
5437
5438       </div>
5439     </div>
5440     <div class="padding"></div>
5441
5442     <div class="entry">
5443       <div class="title">
5444         <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>
5445       </div>
5446       <div class="date">
5447          3rd June 2010
5448       </div>
5449       <div class="body">
5450         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
5451 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
5452 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
5453 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
5454 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
5455
5456 <blockquote><pre>
5457 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
5458   vendor                    count
5459   Dell Computer Corporation     1
5460     PowerEdge 1750              1
5461   IBM                           1
5462     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
5463   Intel                         2
5464   [no-dmi-info]                 3
5465 maintainer:~#
5466 </pre></blockquote>
5467
5468 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
5469 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
5470 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
5471 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
5472 option to list the individual machines.</p>
5473
5474 <p>A larger list is
5475 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
5476 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
5477 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
5478 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
5479 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
5480 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
5481 collector.</p>
5482
5483       </div>
5484       <div class="tags">
5485
5486
5487         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>.
5488
5489
5490       </div>
5491     </div>
5492     <div class="padding"></div>
5493
5494     <div class="entry">
5495       <div class="title">
5496         <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>
5497       </div>
5498       <div class="date">
5499          1st June 2010
5500       </div>
5501       <div class="body">
5502         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
5503 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
5504 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
5505 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
5506 wait.</p>
5507
5508 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
5509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
5510 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
5511 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
5512 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
5513 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
5514
5515 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
5516 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
5517 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
5518 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
5519 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
5520 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
5521 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
5522 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
5523
5524 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
5525
5526       </div>
5527       <div class="tags">
5528
5529
5530         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>.
5531
5532
5533       </div>
5534     </div>
5535     <div class="padding"></div>
5536
5537     <div class="entry">
5538       <div class="title">
5539         <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>
5540       </div>
5541       <div class="date">
5542         27th May 2010
5543       </div>
5544       <div class="body">
5545         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
5546 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
5547 issues are known and should be solved:
5548
5549 <p><ul>
5550
5551 <li>The wicd package seen to
5552 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
5553 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
5554 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
5555 seem to be on the case.</li>
5556
5557 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
5558 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
5559 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
5560 maintainer is on the case.</li>
5561
5562 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
5563 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
5564 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
5565 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
5566 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
5567 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
5568 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
5569 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
5570
5571 </ul></p>
5572
5573 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
5574 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
5575 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
5576 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
5577
5578 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5579 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5580 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5581 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5582
5583 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
5584
5585       </div>
5586       <div class="tags">
5587
5588
5589         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>.
5590
5591
5592       </div>
5593     </div>
5594     <div class="padding"></div>
5595
5596     <div class="entry">
5597       <div class="title">
5598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
5599       </div>
5600       <div class="date">
5601         22nd May 2010
5602       </div>
5603       <div class="body">
5604         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
5605 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
5606 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
5607 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
5608
5609 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
5610 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
5611 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
5612 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
5613 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
5614 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
5615 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
5616 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
5617 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
5618 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
5619 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
5620 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
5621 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
5622 going to work.</p>
5623
5624 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
5625 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
5626 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
5627 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
5628 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
5629 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
5630 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
5631 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
5632 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
5633 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
5634 Edu.</p>
5635
5636 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
5637 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
5638 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
5639 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
5640 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
5641 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
5642
5643 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
5644 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
5645
5646       </div>
5647       <div class="tags">
5648
5649
5650         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>.
5651
5652
5653       </div>
5654     </div>
5655     <div class="padding"></div>
5656
5657     <div class="entry">
5658       <div class="title">
5659         <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>
5660       </div>
5661       <div class="date">
5662         14th May 2010
5663       </div>
5664       <div class="body">
5665         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
5666 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
5667 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
5668 expected, if I am to believe the
5669 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5670 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
5671 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
5672 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
5673 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
5674 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
5675 version.</p>
5676
5677 More information about
5678 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5679 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
5680 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
5681 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5682
5683 <blockquote><pre>
5684 CONCURRENCY=none
5685 </pre></blockquote>
5686
5687 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5688 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5689 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5690 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5691
5692       </div>
5693       <div class="tags">
5694
5695
5696         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>.
5697
5698
5699       </div>
5700     </div>
5701     <div class="padding"></div>
5702
5703     <div class="entry">
5704       <div class="title">
5705         <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>
5706       </div>
5707       <div class="date">
5708         14th May 2010
5709       </div>
5710       <div class="body">
5711         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
5712 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
5713 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
5714 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
5715 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
5716 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
5717 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
5718 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
5719
5720 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
5721 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
5722 this on the collector host:</p>
5723
5724 <blockquote><pre>
5725 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
5726 </pre></blockquote>
5727
5728 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
5729 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
5730
5731 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
5732 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
5733 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
5734 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
5735 written yet.</p>
5736
5737       </div>
5738       <div class="tags">
5739
5740
5741         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>.
5742
5743
5744       </div>
5745     </div>
5746     <div class="padding"></div>
5747
5748     <div class="entry">
5749       <div class="title">
5750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
5751       </div>
5752       <div class="date">
5753         13th May 2010
5754       </div>
5755       <div class="body">
5756         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
5757 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
5758 has been
5759 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
5760
5761 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
5762 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
5763 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
5764 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
5765 based boot system.  Tollef is
5766 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
5767 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
5768 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
5769 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
5770 at the moment do not.</p>
5771
5772 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
5773 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
5774 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
5775 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
5776 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
5777 way forward.</p>
5778
5779 <p>In the mean time, based on the
5780 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5781 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
5782 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
5783 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
5784 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
5785 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
5786 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
5787 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
5788
5789       </div>
5790       <div class="tags">
5791
5792
5793         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>.
5794
5795
5796       </div>
5797     </div>
5798     <div class="padding"></div>
5799
5800     <div class="entry">
5801       <div class="title">
5802         <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>
5803       </div>
5804       <div class="date">
5805          6th May 2010
5806       </div>
5807       <div class="body">
5808         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
5809 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
5810 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
5811 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
5812 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5813 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
5814 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5815
5816 <blockquote><pre>
5817 CONCURRENCY=makefile
5818 </pre></blockquote>
5819
5820 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
5821 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
5822 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
5823 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
5824 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
5825 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
5826 make this happen.</p>
5827
5828 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
5829 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
5830 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
5831 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
5832 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
5833
5834 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
5835 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
5836 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
5837 fix the remaining issues.</p>
5838
5839 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5840 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5841 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5842 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5843
5844       </div>
5845       <div class="tags">
5846
5847
5848         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>.
5849
5850
5851       </div>
5852     </div>
5853     <div class="padding"></div>
5854
5855     <div class="entry">
5856       <div class="title">
5857         <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>
5858       </div>
5859       <div class="date">
5860         27th July 2009
5861       </div>
5862       <div class="body">
5863         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
5864 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
5865 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
5866 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
5867 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
5868 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
5869 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
5870
5871 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
5872 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
5873 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
5874
5875       </div>
5876       <div class="tags">
5877
5878
5879         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>.
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/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
5889       </div>
5890       <div class="date">
5891         22nd July 2009
5892       </div>
5893       <div class="body">
5894         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
5895 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
5896 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
5897 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
5898 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
5899 the package up to date.</p>
5900
5901 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
5902 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
5903 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
5904 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
5905 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
5906 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
5907 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
5908 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
5909 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
5910 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
5911 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
5912 working on the future release.</p>
5913
5914 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
5915 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
5916
5917       </div>
5918       <div class="tags">
5919
5920
5921         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>.
5922
5923
5924       </div>
5925     </div>
5926     <div class="padding"></div>
5927
5928     <div class="entry">
5929       <div class="title">
5930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
5931       </div>
5932       <div class="date">
5933         24th June 2009
5934       </div>
5935       <div class="body">
5936         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5937 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5938 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
5939 funded
5940 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
5941 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
5942 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5943 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5944 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5945 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
5946
5947 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5948 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
5949 boot:</p>
5950
5951 <ul>
5952
5953 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
5954
5955 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5956    clock is in UTC.</li>
5957
5958 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5959    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5960    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
5961
5962 </ul>
5963
5964 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5965 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
5966 Villegas</a>.
5967
5968 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5969 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5970 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
5971 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5972 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5973 using this.</p>
5974
5975 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5976 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5977 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5978 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5979 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
5980 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5981 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
5982
5983       </div>
5984       <div class="tags">
5985
5986
5987         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>.
5988
5989
5990       </div>
5991     </div>
5992     <div class="padding"></div>
5993
5994     <div class="entry">
5995       <div class="title">
5996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
5997       </div>
5998       <div class="date">
5999         17th May 2009
6000       </div>
6001       <div class="body">
6002         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
6003 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
6004 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
6005 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
6006 dager siden kom
6007 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
6008 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
6009 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
6010 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
6011 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
6012
6013 <blockquote>
6014 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
6015 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
6016 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
6017 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
6018 </blockquote>
6019
6020 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
6021 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
6022 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
6023 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
6024 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
6025
6026 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
6027 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
6028 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
6029
6030       </div>
6031       <div class="tags">
6032
6033
6034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
6035
6036
6037       </div>
6038     </div>
6039     <div class="padding"></div>
6040
6041     <div class="entry">
6042       <div class="title">
6043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
6044       </div>
6045       <div class="date">
6046          7th May 2009
6047       </div>
6048       <div class="body">
6049         <p>Kom over
6050 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
6051 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
6052 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
6053 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
6054 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
6055 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
6056 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
6057
6058       </div>
6059       <div class="tags">
6060
6061
6062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6063
6064
6065       </div>
6066     </div>
6067     <div class="padding"></div>
6068
6069     <div class="entry">
6070       <div class="title">
6071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
6072       </div>
6073       <div class="date">
6074          2nd May 2009
6075       </div>
6076       <div class="body">
6077         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
6078 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
6079 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
6080 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
6081 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
6082 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
6083 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
6084 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
6085 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
6086 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
6087 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
6088 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
6089 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
6090 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
6091 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
6092 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
6093 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
6094 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
6095 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
6096 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
6097
6098 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
6099 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
6100 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
6101 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
6102 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
6103 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
6104 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
6105 betydelige.</p>
6106
6107       </div>
6108       <div class="tags">
6109
6110
6111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6112
6113
6114       </div>
6115     </div>
6116     <div class="padding"></div>
6117
6118     <div class="entry">
6119       <div class="title">
6120         <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>
6121       </div>
6122       <div class="date">
6123          2nd May 2009
6124       </div>
6125       <div class="body">
6126         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
6127 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
6128 do not yet know them.</p>
6129
6130 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
6131 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
6132 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
6133 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
6134 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
6135 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
6136 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
6137 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
6138 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
6139 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
6140 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
6141
6142 <p>The second one is
6143 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
6144 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
6145 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
6146 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
6147 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
6148 and the company behind it is running
6149 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
6150 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
6151 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
6152 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
6153 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
6154 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
6155 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
6156 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
6157
6158 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
6159 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
6160 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
6161 surrounded by today.</p>
6162
6163       </div>
6164       <div class="tags">
6165
6166
6167         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>.
6168
6169
6170       </div>
6171     </div>
6172     <div class="padding"></div>
6173
6174     <div class="entry">
6175       <div class="title">
6176         <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>
6177       </div>
6178       <div class="date">
6179         28th April 2009
6180       </div>
6181       <div class="body">
6182         <p>Julien Blache
6183 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
6184 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
6185 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
6186 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
6187 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
6188 properties.</p>
6189
6190       </div>
6191       <div class="tags">
6192
6193
6194         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>.
6195
6196
6197       </div>
6198     </div>
6199     <div class="padding"></div>
6200
6201     <div class="entry">
6202       <div class="title">
6203         <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>
6204       </div>
6205       <div class="date">
6206         30th March 2009
6207       </div>
6208       <div class="body">
6209         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
6210 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
6211 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
6212 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
6213 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
6214 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
6215 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
6216 application.</p>
6217
6218 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
6219 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
6220 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
6221 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
6222 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
6223 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
6224 blocked from doing so.</p>
6225
6226 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
6227 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
6228 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
6229 requirements change.</p>
6230
6231 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
6232 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
6233 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
6234
6235       </div>
6236       <div class="tags">
6237
6238
6239         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>.
6240
6241
6242       </div>
6243     </div>
6244     <div class="padding"></div>
6245
6246     <div class="entry">
6247       <div class="title">
6248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
6249       </div>
6250       <div class="date">
6251         29th March 2009
6252       </div>
6253       <div class="body">
6254         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
6255 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
6256 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
6257 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
6258 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
6259 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
6260 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
6261 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
6262 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
6263 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
6264 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
6265 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
6266 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
6267 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
6268 now. :)</p>
6269
6270       </div>
6271       <div class="tags">
6272
6273
6274         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>.
6275
6276
6277       </div>
6278     </div>
6279     <div class="padding"></div>
6280
6281     <div class="entry">
6282       <div class="title">
6283         <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>
6284       </div>
6285       <div class="date">
6286         29th March 2009
6287       </div>
6288       <div class="body">
6289         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
6290 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
6291 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
6292 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
6293 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
6294 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
6295
6296 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
6297 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
6298 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
6299 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
6300 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
6301 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
6302 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
6303 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
6304 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
6305 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
6306 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
6307 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
6308 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
6309
6310 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
6311 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
6312 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
6313 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
6314
6315 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
6316 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
6317
6318 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
6319 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
6320 new IETF work group?</p>
6321
6322       </div>
6323       <div class="tags">
6324
6325
6326         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>.
6327
6328
6329       </div>
6330     </div>
6331     <div class="padding"></div>
6332
6333     <div class="entry">
6334       <div class="title">
6335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
6336       </div>
6337       <div class="date">
6338         15th February 2009
6339       </div>
6340       <div class="body">
6341         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
6342 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
6343 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
6344 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
6345 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
6346 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
6347 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
6348 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
6349 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
6350 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
6351 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
6352 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
6353
6354       </div>
6355       <div class="tags">
6356
6357
6358         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
6359
6360
6361       </div>
6362     </div>
6363     <div class="padding"></div>
6364
6365     <div class="entry">
6366       <div class="title">
6367         <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>
6368       </div>
6369       <div class="date">
6370          7th December 2008
6371       </div>
6372       <div class="body">
6373         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
6374 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
6375 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
6376 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
6377 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
6378 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
6379 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
6380 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
6381
6382 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
6383 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
6384 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
6385 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
6386 of these cards.</p>
6387
6388       </div>
6389       <div class="tags">
6390
6391
6392         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>.
6393
6394
6395       </div>
6396     </div>
6397     <div class="padding"></div>
6398
6399     <div class="entry">
6400       <div class="title">
6401         <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>
6402       </div>
6403       <div class="date">
6404         25th November 2008
6405       </div>
6406       <div class="body">
6407         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
6408 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
6409 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
6410 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
6411 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
6412 notes are available on
6413 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
6414 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
6415 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
6416 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
6417 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
6418 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
6419 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
6420 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
6421 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
6422
6423 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
6424 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</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/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>.
6431
6432
6433       </div>
6434     </div>
6435     <div class="padding"></div>
6436
6437     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
6438     <div id="sidebar">
6439
6440
6441
6442 <h2>Archive</h2>
6443 <ul>
6444
6445 <li>2013
6446 <ul>
6447
6448 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
6449
6450 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
6451
6452 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
6453
6454 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
6455
6456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6457
6458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
6459
6460 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (6)</a></li>
6461
6462 </ul></li>
6463
6464 <li>2012
6465 <ul>
6466
6467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
6468
6469 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
6470
6471 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
6472
6473 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
6474
6475 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
6476
6477 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
6478
6479 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
6480
6481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
6482
6483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
6484
6485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
6486
6487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
6488
6489 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
6490
6491 </ul></li>
6492
6493 <li>2011
6494 <ul>
6495
6496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
6497
6498 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
6499
6500 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
6501
6502 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
6503
6504 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
6505
6506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
6507
6508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
6509
6510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
6511
6512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
6513
6514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
6515
6516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
6517
6518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
6519
6520 </ul></li>
6521
6522 <li>2010
6523 <ul>
6524
6525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
6526
6527 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
6528
6529 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
6530
6531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
6532
6533 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6534
6535 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
6536
6537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
6538
6539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
6540
6541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
6542
6543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
6544
6545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
6546
6547 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
6548
6549 </ul></li>
6550
6551 <li>2009
6552 <ul>
6553
6554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
6555
6556 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
6557
6558 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
6559
6560 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
6561
6562 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6563
6564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
6565
6566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
6567
6568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
6569
6570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
6571
6572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
6573
6574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
6575
6576 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
6577
6578 </ul></li>
6579
6580 <li>2008
6581 <ul>
6582
6583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
6584
6585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
6586
6587 </ul></li>
6588
6589 </ul>
6590
6591
6592
6593 <h2>Tags</h2>
6594 <ul>
6595
6596  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
6597
6598  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
6599
6600  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
6601
6602  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
6603
6604  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
6605
6606  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
6607
6608  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
6609
6610  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (83)</a></li>
6611
6612  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (137)</a></li>
6613
6614  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
6615
6616  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
6617
6618  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
6619
6620  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (209)</a></li>
6621
6622  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
6623
6624  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
6625
6626  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
6627
6628  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
6629
6630  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
6631
6632  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
6633
6634  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
6635
6636  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
6637
6638  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
6639
6640  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
6641
6642  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
6643
6644  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (234)</a></li>
6645
6646  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (153)</a></li>
6647
6648  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
6649
6650  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
6651
6652  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
6653
6654  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
6655
6656  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
6657
6658  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
6659
6660  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
6661
6662  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
6663
6664  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
6665
6666  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
6667
6668  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
6669
6670  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
6671
6672  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
6673
6674  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
6675
6676  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
6677
6678  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
6679
6680  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
6681
6682  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
6683
6684  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
6685
6686  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
6687
6688  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
6689
6690  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
6691
6692  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
6693
6694 </ul>
6695
6696
6697     </div>
6698     <p style="text-align: right">
6699  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
6700 </p>
6701
6702   </body>
6703 </html>