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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_of_my_2024_free_software_activities.html">Some of my 2024 free software activities</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         10th February 2025
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>It is a while since I posted a summary of the free software and
  32 open culture activities and projects I have worked on.  Here is a
  33 quick summary of the major ones from last year.</p>
  34
  35 <p>I guess the biggest project of the year has been migrating orphaned
  36 packages in Debian without a version control system to have a git
  37 repository on salsa.debian.org.  When I started in April around 450
  38 the orphaned packages needed git.  I've since migrated around 250 of
  39 the packages to a salsa git repository, and around 40 packages were
  40 left when I took a break.  Not sure who did the around 160 conversions
  41 I was not involved in, but I am very glad I got some help on the
  42 project.  I stopped partly because some of the remaining packages
  43 needed more disk space to build than I have available on my
  44 development machine, and partly because some had a strange build setup
  45 I could not figure out.  I had a time budget of 20 minutes per
  46 package, if the package proved problematic and likely to take longer,
  47 I moved to another package.  Might continue later, if I manage to free
  48 up some disk space.</p>
  49
  50 <p>Another rather big project was the translation to Norwegian Bokmål
  51 and publishing of the first book ever published by a Sámi woman, the
  52 «<a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/#infoerlifellerdoed2024">Møter
  53 vi liv eller død?</a>» book by Elsa Laua, with a PD0 and CC-BY
  54 license.  I released it during the summer, and to my surprise it has
  55 already sold several copies.  As I suck at marketing, I did not expect
  56 to sell any.</p>
  57
  58 <p>A smaller, but more long term project (for more than 10 years now),
  59 and related to orphaned packages in Debian, is my project to ensure a
  60 simple way to install hardware related packages in Debian when the
  61 relevant hardware is present in a machine.  It made a fairly big
  62 advance forward last year, partly because I have been poking and
  63 begging package maintainers and upstream developers to include
  64 AppStream metadata XML in their packages.  I've also released a few
  65 new versions of the isenkram system with some robustness improvements.
  66 Today 127 packages in Debian provide such information, allowing
  67 <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> to propose them.  Will keep pushing until the
  68 around 35 package names currently hard coded in the isenkram package
  69 are down to zero, so only information provided by individual packages
  70 are used for this feature.</p>
  71
  72 <p>As part of the work on AppStream, I have sponsored several packages
  73 into Debian where the maintainer wanted to fix the issue but lacked
  74 direct upload rights.  I've also sponsored a few other packages, when
  75 approached by the maintainer.</p>
  76
  77 <p>I would also like to mention two hardware related packages in
  78 particular where I have been involved, the megactl and mfi-util
  79 packages.  Both work with the hardware RAID systems in several Dell
  80 PowerEdge servers, and the first one is already available in Debian
  81 (and of course, proposed by isenkram when used on the appropriate Dell
  82 server), the other is waiting for NEW processing since this autumn.  I
  83 manage several such Dell servers and would like the tools needed to
  84 monitor and configure these RAID controllers to be available from
  85 within Debian out of the box.</p>
  86
  87 <p>Vaguely related to hardware support in Debian, I have also been
  88 trying to find ways to help out the Debian ROCm team, to improve the
  89 support in Debian for my artificial idiocy (AI) compute node.  So far
  90 only uploaded one package, helped test the initial packaging of
  91 llama.cpp and tried to figure out how to get good speech recognition
  92 like Whisper into Debian.<p>
  93
  94 <p>I am still involved in the LinuxCNC project, and organised a
  95 developer gathering in Norway last summer.  A new one is planned the
  96 summer of 2025.  I've also helped evaluate patches and uploaded new
  97 versions of LinuxCNC into Debian.</p>
  98
  99 <p>After a 10 years long break, we managed to get a new and improved
 100 upstream version of <tt>lsdvd</tt> released just before Christmas.  As
 101 I use it regularly to maintain my DVD archive, I was very happy to
 102 finally get out a version supporting DVDDiscID useful for uniquely
 103 identifying DVDs.  I am dreaming of a Internet service mapping DVD IDs
 104 to IMDB movie IDs, to make life as a DVD collector easier.</p>
 105
 106 <p>My involvement in Norwegian archive standardisation and the free
 107 software implementation of the vendor neutral Noark 5 API continued
 108 for the entire year.  I've been pushing patches into both the API and
 109 the test code for the API, participated in several editorial meetings
 110 regarding the Noark 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt specification, submitted
 111 several proposals for improvements for the same.  We also organised a
 112 small seminar for Noark 5 interested people, and is organising a new
 113 seminar in a month.</p>
 114
 115 <p>Part of the year was spent working on and coordinating a Norwegian
 116 Bokmål translation of the marvellous children's book
 117 «<a href="https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann/">Ada and
 118 Zangemann<a>», which focus on the right to repair and control your own
 119 property, and the value of controlling the software on the devices you
 120 own.  The translation is mostly complete, and is now waiting for a
 121 transformation of the project and manuscript to use Docbook XML
 122 instead of a home made semi-text based format.  Great progress is
 123 being made and the new book build process is almost complete.</p>
 124
 125 <p>I have also been looking at how to companies in Norway can use free
 126 software to report their accounting summaries to the Norwegian
 127 government.  Several new regulations make it very hard for companies
 128 to do use free software for accounting, and I would like to change
 129 this.  Found a few drafts for opening up the reporting process, and
 130 have read up on some of the specifications, but nothing much is
 131 working yet.</p>
 132
 133 <p>These were just the top of the iceberg, but I guess this blog post
 134 is long enough now. If you would like to help with any of these
 135 projects, please get in touch, either directly on the project mailing
 136 lists and forums, or with me via email, IRC or Signal. :)</p>
 137
 138 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 139 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 140 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 141
 142       </div>
 143       <div class="tags">
 144
 145
 146         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri</a>.
 147
 148
 149       </div>
 150     </div>
 151     <div class="padding"></div>
 152
 153     <div class="entry">
 154       <div class="title">
 155         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_oggz_release_1_1_2_after_15_years.html">New oggz release 1.1.2 after 15 years</a>
 156       </div>
 157       <div class="date">
 158          9th February 2025
 159       </div>
 160       <div class="body">
 161         <p>A little over a week ago, I noticed
 162 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/liboggz">the liboggz
 163 package</a> on my Debian dashboard had not had a new upstream release
 164 for a while.  A closer look showed that its last release, version
 165 1.1.1, happened in 2010.  A few patches had accumulated in the Debian
 166 package, and I even noticed that I had passed on these patches to
 167 upstream five years ago.  A handful crash bugs had been reported
 168 against the Debian package, and looking at the upstream repository I
 169 even found a few crash bugs reported there too.  To add insult to
 170 injury, I discovered that upstream had accumulated several fixes in the
 171 years between 2010 and now, and many of them had not made their way
 172 into the Debian package.  I decided enough was enough, and that a new
 173 upstream release was needed fixing these nasty crash bugs.  Luckily I
 174 am also a member of the Xiph team, aka upstream, and could actually go
 175 to work immediately to fix it.</p>
 176
 177 <p>I started by adding automatic build testing on
 178 <a href="https://gitlab.xiph.org/xiph/liboggz">the Xiph gitlab oggz
 179 instance</a>, to get a better idea of the state of affairs with the
 180 code base.  This exposed a few build problems, which I had to fix.  In
 181 parallel to this, I sent an email announcing my wish for a new release
 182 to every person who had committed to the upstream code base since
 183 2010, and asked for help doing a new release both on email and on the
 184 #xiph IRC channel.  Sadly only a fraction of their email providers
 185 accepted my email.  But Ralph Giles in the Xiph team came to the
 186 rescue and provided invaluable help to guide be through the release
 187 Xiph process.  While this was going on, I spent a few days tracking
 188 down the crash bugs with good help from
 189 <a href="https://www.valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, and came up with
 190 patch proposals to get rid of at least these specific crash bugs.  The
 191 open issues also had to be checked.  Several of them proved to be
 192 fixed already, but a few I had to creat patches for.  I also checked
 193 out the Debian, Arch, Fedora, Suse and Gentoo packages to see if there
 194 were patches applied in these Linux distributions that should be
 195 passed upstream.  The end result was ready yesterday.  A new liboggz
 196 release, version 1.1.2, was tagged, wrapped up and published on the
 197 project page.  And today, the new release was uploaded into
 198 Debian.</p>
 199
 200 <p>You are probably by now curious on what actually changed in the
 201 library.  I guess the most interesting new feature was support for
 202 Opus and VP8.  Almost all other changes were stability or
 203 documentation fixes.  The rest were related to the gitlab continuous
 204 integration testing.  All in all, this was really a minor update,
 205 hence the version bump only from 1.1.1 to to 1.1.2, but it was long
 206 overdue and I am very happy that it is out the door.</p>
 207
 208 <p>One change proposed upstream was not included this time, as it
 209 extended the API and changed some of the existing library methods, and
 210 thus require a major SONAME bump and possibly code changes in every
 211 program using the library.  As I am not that familiar with the code
 212 base, I am unsure if I am the right person to evaluate the change.
 213 Perhaps later.</p>
 214
 215 <p>Since the release was tagged, a few minor fixes has been committed
 216 upstream already: automatic testing the cross building to Windows, and
 217 documentation updates linking to the correct project page.  If a
 218 important issue is discovered with this release, I guess a new release
 219 might happen soon including the minor fixes.  If not, perhaps they can
 220 wait fifteen years. :)</p>
 221
 222 <p>I would like to send a big thank you to everyone that helped make
 223 this release happen, from the people adding fixes upstream over the
 224 course of fifteen years, to the ones reporting crash bugs, other bugs
 225 and those maintaining the package in various Linux distributions.
 226 Thank you very much for your time and interest.</p>
 227
 228 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 229 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 230 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 231
 232       </div>
 233       <div class="tags">
 234
 235
 236         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 237
 238
 239       </div>
 240     </div>
 241     <div class="padding"></div>
 242
 243     <div class="entry">
 244       <div class="title">
 245         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html">121 packages in Debian mapped to hardware for automatic recommendation</a>
 246       </div>
 247       <div class="date">
 248         19th January 2025
 249       </div>
 250       <div class="body">
 251         <p>For some years now, I have been working on a automatic hardware
 252 based package recommendation system for Debian and other Linux
 253 distributions.  The isenkram system I started on back in 2013 now
 254 consist of two subsystems, one locating firmware files using the
 255 information provided by apt-file, and one matching hardware to
 256 packages using information provided by AppStream.  The former is very
 257 similar to the mechanism implemented in debian-installer to pick the
 258 right firmware packages to install. This post is about the latter
 259 system.  Thanks to steady progress and good help from both other
 260 Debian and upstream developers, I am happy to report that
 261 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the Isenkram
 262 system</a> now are able to recommend 121 packages using information
 263 provided via
 264 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/">AppStream</a>.</p>
 265
 266 <p>The mapping is done using modalias information provided by the
 267 kernel, the same information used by udev when creating device files,
 268 and the kernel when deciding which kernel modules to load.  To get all
 269 the modalias identifiers relevant for your machine, you can run the
 270 following command on the command line:</p>
 271
 272 <pre>
 273 find /sys/devices -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 sort -u
 274 </pre>
 275
 276 <p>The modalias identifiers can look something like this:</p>
 277
 278 <pre>
 279 acpi:PNP0000
 280 cpu:type:x86,ven0000fam0006mod003F:feature:,0000,0001,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,0007,0008,0009,000B,000C,000D,000E,000F,0010,0011,0013,0015,0016,0017,0018,0019,001A,001B,001C,001D,001F,002B,0034,003A,003B,003D,0068,006B,006C,006D,006F,0070,0072,0074,0075,0076,0078,0079,007C,0080,0081,0082,0083,0084,0085,0086,0087,0088,0089,008B,008C,008D,008E,008F,0091,0092,0093,0094,0095,0096,0097,0098,0099,009A,009B,009C,009D,009E,00C0,00C5,00E1,00E3,00EB,00ED,00F0,00F1,00F3,00F5,00F6,00F9,00FA,00FB,00FD,00FF,0100,0101,0102,0103,0111,0120,0121,0123,0125,0127,0128,0129,012A,012C,012D,0140,0160,0161,0165,016C,017B,01C0,01C1,01C2,01C4,01C5,01C6,01F9,024A,025A,025B,025C,025F,0282
 281 dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr2.18.1:bd08/14/2023:br2.18:svnDellInc.:pnPowerEdgeR730:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0H21J3:rvrA09:cvnDellInc.:ct23:cvr:skuSKU=NotProvided
 282 pci:v00008086d00008D3Bsv00001028sd00000600bc07sc80i00
 283 platform:serial8250
 284 scsi:t-0x05
 285 usb:v413CpA001d0000dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00in00
 286 </pre>
 287
 288 <p>The entries above are a selection of the complete set available on
 289 a Dell PowerEdge R730 machine I have access to, to give an idea about
 290 the various styles of hardware identifiers presented in the modalias
 291 format.  When looking up relevant packages in a Debian Testing
 292 installation on the same R730, I get this list of packages
 293 proposed:</p>
 294
 295 <pre>
 296 % sudo isenkram-lookup
 297 firmware-bnx2x
 298 firmware-nvidia-graphics
 299 firmware-qlogic
 300 megactl
 301 wsl
 302 %
 303 </pre>
 304
 305 <p>The list consist of firmware packages requested by kernel modules,
 306 as well packages with program to get the status from the RAID
 307 controller and to maintain the LAN console.  When the edac-utils
 308 package providing tools to check the ECC RAM status will enter testing
 309 in a few days, it will also show up as a proposal from isenkram.  In
 310 addition, once the mfiutil package we uploaded in October get past the
 311 NEW processing, it will also propose a tool to configure the RAID
 312 controller.</p>
 313
 314 <p>Another example is the trusty old Lenovo Thinkpad X230, which have
 315 hardware handled by several packages in the archive.  This is running
 316 on Debian Stable:</p>
 317
 318 <pre>
 319 % isenkram-lookup
 320 beignet-opencl-icd
 321 bluez
 322 cheese
 323 ethtool
 324 firmware-iwlwifi
 325 firmware-misc-nonfree
 326 fprintd
 327 fprintd-demo
 328 gkrellm-thinkbat
 329 hdapsd
 330 libpam-fprintd
 331 pidgin-blinklight
 332 thinkfan
 333 tlp
 334 tp-smapi-dkms
 335 tpb
 336 %
 337 </pre>
 338
 339 <p>Here there proposal consist of software to handle the camera,
 340 bluetooth, network card, wifi card, GPU, fan, fingerprint reader and
 341 acceleration sensor on the machine.</p>
 342
 343 <p>Here is the complete set of packages currently providing hardware
 344 mapping via AppStream in Debian Unstable: air-quality-sensor,
 345 alsa-firmware-loaders, antpm, array-info, avarice, avrdude,
 346 bmusb-v4l2proxy, brltty, calibre, colorhug-client, concordance-common,
 347 consolekit, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux, edac-utils,
 348 eegdev-plugins-free, ekeyd, elogind, firmware-amd-graphics,
 349 firmware-ath9k-htc, firmware-atheros, firmware-b43-installer,
 350 firmware-b43legacy-installer, firmware-bnx2, firmware-bnx2x,
 351 firmware-brcm80211, firmware-carl9170, firmware-cavium,
 352 firmware-intel-graphics, firmware-intel-misc, firmware-ipw2x00,
 353 firmware-ivtv, firmware-iwlwifi, firmware-libertas,
 354 firmware-linux-free, firmware-mediatek, firmware-misc-nonfree,
 355 firmware-myricom, firmware-netronome, firmware-netxen,
 356 firmware-nvidia-graphics, firmware-qcom-soc, firmware-qlogic,
 357 firmware-realtek, firmware-ti-connectivity, fpga-icestorm, g810-led,
 358 galileo, garmin-forerunner-tools, gkrellm-thinkbat, goldencheetah,
 359 gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, i8kutils, imsprog, ledger-wallets-udev,
 360 libairspy0, libam7xxx0.1, libbladerf2, libgphoto2-6t64,
 361 libhamlib-utils, libm2k0.9.0, libmirisdr4, libnxt, libopenxr1-monado,
 362 libosmosdr0, librem5-flash-image, librtlsdr0, libticables2-8,
 363 libx52pro0, libykpers-1-1, libyubikey-udev, limesuite,
 364 linuxcnc-uspace, lomoco, madwimax, media-player-info, megactl, mixxx,
 365 mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mu-editor, mustang-plug, nbc, nitrokey-app, nqc,
 366 ola, openfpgaloader, openocd, openrazer-driver-dkms, pcmciautils,
 367 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, ponyprog, printer-driver-splix,
 368 python-yubico-tools, python3-btchip, qlcplus, rosegarden, scdaemon,
 369 sispmctl, solaar, spectools, sunxi-tools, t2n, thinkfan, tlp,
 370 tp-smapi-dkms, trezor, tucnak, ubertooth, usbrelay, uuu, viking,
 371 w1retap, wsl, xawtv, xinput-calibrator, xserver-xorg-input-wacom and
 372 xtrx-dkms.</p>
 373
 374 <p>In addition to these, there are several
 375 <a href="https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?user=pere%40hungry.com&tag=appstream-modalias">with
 376 patches pending in the Debian bug tracking system</a>, and even more
 377 where no-one wrote patches yet.  Good candiates for the latter are
 378 packages
 379 <a href="https://udd.debian.org/lintian-tag.cgi?tag=appstream-metadata-missing-modalias-provide">with
 380 udev rules but no AppStream hardware information</a>.</p>
 381
 382 <p>The isenkram system consist of two packages, isenkram-cli with the
 383 command line tools, and isenkram with a GUI background process.  The
 384 latter will listen for dbus events from udev emitted when new hardware
 385 become available (like when inserting a USB dongle or discovering a
 386 new bluetooth device), look up the modalias entry for this piece of
 387 hardware in AppStream (and a hard coded list of mappings from isenkram
 388 - currently working hard to move this list to AppStream), and pop up a
 389 dialog proposing to install any not already installed packages
 390 supporting this hardware.  It work very well today when inserting the
 391 LEGO Mindstorms RCX, NXT and EV3 controllers. :) If you want to make
 392 sure more hardware related packages get recommended, please help out
 393 fixing the remaining packages in Debian to provide AppStream metadata
 394 with hardware mappings.</p>
 395
 396 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 397 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 398 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 399
 400       </div>
 401       <div class="tags">
 402
 403
 404         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 405
 406
 407       </div>
 408     </div>
 409     <div class="padding"></div>
 410
 411     <div class="entry">
 412       <div class="title">
 413         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2025_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2025?</a>
 414       </div>
 415       <div class="date">
 416         18th January 2025
 417       </div>
 418       <div class="body">
 419         <p><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">Seven</a>
 420 and
 421 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">twelve</a>
 422 years ago, I measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian
 423 was</a>, first by analysing the desktop files in all packages in the
 424 archive, then by analysing the DEP-11 AppStream data set.  I guess it
 425 is time to repeat the measurement, only for unstable as last time:</p>
 426
 427 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 428
 429 <pre>
 430   count MIME type
 431   ----- -----------------------
 432      63 image/png
 433      63 image/jpeg
 434      57 image/tiff
 435      54 image/gif
 436      51 image/bmp
 437      50 audio/mpeg
 438      48 text/plain
 439      42 audio/x-mp3
 440      40 application/ogg
 441      39 audio/x-wav
 442      39 audio/x-flac
 443      36 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
 444      35 audio/x-mpeg
 445      34 audio/x-mpegurl
 446      34 audio/ogg
 447      33 application/x-ogg
 448      32 audio/mp4
 449      31 audio/x-scpls
 450      31 application/pdf
 451      29 audio/x-ms-wma
 452 </pre>
 453
 454 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot:</p>
 455
 456 <pre>
 457 cat /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz | \
 458   zcat | awk '/^  - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | \
 459   uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20
 460 </pre>
 461
 462 <p>It is nice to see that the same number of packages now support PNG
 463 and JPEG.  Last time JPEG had more support than PNG.  Most of the MIME
 464 types are known to me, but the 'audio/x-scpls' one I have no idea what
 465 represent, except it being an audio format.  To find the packages
 466 claiming support for this format, the appstreamcli command from the
 467 appstream package can be used:
 468
 469 <pre>
 470 % appstreamcli what-provides mediatype audio/x-scpls | grep Package: | sort -u
 471 Package: alsaplayer-common
 472 Package: amarok
 473 Package: audacious
 474 Package: brasero
 475 Package: celluloid
 476 Package: clapper
 477 Package: clementine
 478 Package: cynthiune.app
 479 Package: elisa
 480 Package: gtranscribe
 481 Package: kaffeine
 482 Package: kmplayer
 483 Package: kylin-burner
 484 Package: lollypop
 485 Package: mediaconch-gui
 486 Package: mediainfo-gui
 487 Package: mplayer-gui
 488 Package: mpv
 489 Package: mystiq
 490 Package: parlatype
 491 Package: parole
 492 Package: pragha
 493 Package: qmmp
 494 Package: rhythmbox
 495 Package: sayonara
 496 Package: shotcut
 497 Package: smplayer
 498 Package: soundconverter
 499 Package: strawberry
 500 Package: syncplay
 501 Package: vlc
 502 %
 503 </pre>
 504
 505 <p>Look like several video and auto tools understand the format.
 506 Similarly one can check out the number of packages supporting the STL
 507 format commonly used for 3D printing:</p>
 508
 509 <pre>
 510 % appstreamcli what-provides mediatype model/stl | grep Package: | sort -u
 511 Package: cura
 512 Package: freecad
 513 Package: open3d-viewer
 514 %
 515 </pre>
 516
 517 <p>How strange the
 518 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
 519 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">prusa-slicer</a>
 520 packages do not support STL.  Perhaps just missing package metadata?
 521 Luckily the amount of package metadata in Debian is getting better,
 522 and hopefully this way of locating relevant packages for any file
 523 format will be the preferred one soon.
 524
 525 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 526 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 527 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 528
 529       </div>
 530       <div class="tags">
 531
 532
 533         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 534
 535
 536       </div>
 537     </div>
 538     <div class="padding"></div>
 539
 540     <div class="entry">
 541       <div class="title">
 542         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2025_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The 2025 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</a>
 543       </div>
 544       <div class="date">
 545         11th January 2025
 546       </div>
 547       <div class="body">
 548         <p><a href="https://linuxcnc.org/">The LinuxCNC project</a> is
 549 trotting along.  And I believe this great software system for
 550 numerical control of machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma
 551 cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and hexapods, would do even
 552 better with more in-person developer gatherings, so we plan to
 553 organise such gathering this summer too.</p>
 554
 555 <p>This year we would like to invite to a small LinuxCNC and free
 556 software fabrication workshop/gathering in Norway this summer for the
 557 weekend starting July 4th 2025.  New this year is the slightly larger
 558 scope, and we invite people also outside the LinuxCNC community to
 559 join.  As earlier, we suggest to organize it as an
 560 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference">unconference</a>,
 561 where the participants create the program upon arrival.</p>
 562
 563 <p>The location is a metal workshop 15 minutes drive away from to the
 564 Gardermoen airport (OSL), where there is a lot of space and a hotel only
 565 5 minutes away by car. We plan to fire up the barbeque in the evenings.</p>
 566
 567 <p>Please let us know if you would like to join.  We track the list of
 568 participants on <a href="https://pad.efn.no/p/linuxcnc-2025-norway">a
 569 simple pad</a>, please add yourself there if you are interested in joining.</p>
 570
 571 <p><a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/">The NUUG Foundation</a> has on
 572 our request offered to handle any money involved with this gathering,
 573 in other words holding any sponsor funds and paying any bills.
 574 NUUG Foundation is a spinnoff from the NUUG member organisation here
 575 in Norway with long ties to the free software and open standards
 576 communities.</p>
 577
 578 <p>As usual we hope to find sponsors to pay for food, lodging and travel.</p>
 579
 580 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 581 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 582 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 583
 584       </div>
 585       <div class="tags">
 586
 587
 588         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>.
 589
 590
 591       </div>
 592     </div>
 593     <div class="padding"></div>
 594
 595     <div class="entry">
 596       <div class="title">
 597         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_0_18_after_ten_years.html">New lsdvd release 0.18 after ten years</a>
 598       </div>
 599       <div class="date">
 600         21st December 2024
 601       </div>
 602       <div class="body">
 603         <p>The rumors of the death of
 604 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/">the lsdvd project</a>
 605 is slightly exaggerated.  And the last few months, we have been
 606 working on fixing and improving it, culminating in a new release last
 607 night.  This is the list of changes in the new 0.18 release, as
 608 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/59108028/">announced
 609 on the project mailing list</a>:</p>
 610
 611 <ul>
 612
 613   <li>Simplified autoconf setup, dropped --enable-debug option.</li>
 614   <li>Improved video resolution reporting (<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/8/">Fixes #8</a>).</li>
 615   <li>Applied patches fetched from BSDs (<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/7/">Fixes #7</a>).</li>
 616   <li>Corrected Perl output (<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/1/">Fixes #1</a>).</li>
 617   <li>Adjusted Pan and Scan entries to produce valid XML.</li>
 618   <li>Changed --help output from stderr to stdout.</li>
 619   <li>Corrected aspect ratio and audio format formatting.</li>
 620   <li>Avoid segfault when hitting a NULL pointer in the IFO structure.</li>
 621   <li>Change build rules to supress compiler flags, to make it easier to
 622    spot warnings.</li>
 623   <li>Set default DVD device based on OS (Linux, *BSD, Darwin)</li>
 624   <li>Added libdvdread DVDDiscID to output.</li>
 625   <li>Corrected typo in longest track value in XML format.</li>
 626   <li>Switched XML output to use libxml to avoid string encoding issues.</li>
 627   <li>Added simple build time test suite.</li>
 628   <li>Cleaned up language code handling and adding missing mapping for
 629    language codes 'nb' and 'nn'.</li>
 630   <li>Added JSON output support using -Oj.</li>
 631 </ul>
 632
 633 <p>The most exciting news to me is easy access to the DVDDiscID, which
 634 make it a lot easier to identify DVD duplicates across a large
 635 collection of DVDs.  During testing it has proved to be very effective
 636 ad identifying when DVDs in a DVD box (say all Star Wars movies) is
 637 identical to DVDs sold individually (like the same Star Wars movies
 638 packaged individually).</p>
 639
 640 <p>Because none of the current developers got access to do tarball
 641 releases on Sourceforge any more, the release is only available as
 642 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/0.18/tree/">a git
 643 tag</a> in the repository.  Lets hope it do not take ten years for the
 644 next release.  The project are discussing to move away from
 645 Sourceforge, but it has not yet concluded.</p>
 646
 647 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 648 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 649 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 650
 651       </div>
 652       <div class="tags">
 653
 654
 655         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 656
 657
 658       </div>
 659     </div>
 660     <div class="padding"></div>
 661
 662     <div class="entry">
 663       <div class="title">
 664         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_than_200_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__216_to_go.html">More than 200 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 216 to go</a>
 665       </div>
 666       <div class="date">
 667         11th July 2024
 668       </div>
 669       <div class="body">
 670         <p><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">In
 671 April</a>, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages without any
 672 version control system listed in debian/control to git.  This morning,
 673 my Debian QA page finally reached 200 QA packages migrated.  In
 674 reality there are a few more, as the packages uploaded by someone else
 675 after my initial upload have disappeared from my QA uploads list.  As
 676 I am running out of steam and will most likely focus on other parts of
 677 Debian moving forward, I hope someone else will find time to continue
 678 the migration to bring the number of orphaned packages without any
 679 version control system down to zero.  Here is the updated recipe if
 680 someone want to help out.</p>
 681
 682 <p>To locate packages to work on, the following one-liner can be used:</p>
 683
 684 <blockquote><pre>
 685 PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
 686   --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
 687    where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
 688    OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
 689    OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
 690    order by random() limit 10;"
 691 </pre></blockquote>
 692
 693 <p>Pick a random package from the list and run the latest edition of
 694 the script
 695 <tt><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-07-11-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh">debian-snap-to-salsa</a></tt>
 696 with the package name as the argument to prepare a git repository with
 697 the existing packaging.  This will download old Debian packages from
 698 <tt>snapshot.debian.org</tt>.  Note that very recent uploads will not
 699 be included, so check out the package on <tt>tracker.debian.org</tt>.
 700 Next, run <tt>gbp buildpackage --git-ignore-new</tt> to verify that
 701 the package build as it should, and then visit
 702 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/debian/">https://salsa.debian.org/debian/</a>
 703 and make sure there is not already a git repository for the package
 704 there.  I also did <tt>git log -p debian/control</tt> and look for vcs
 705 entries to check if the package used to have a git repository on
 706 Alioth, and see if it can be a useful starting point moving forward.
 707 If all this check out, I created a new gitlab project below the Debian
 708 group on salsa, push the package source there and upload a new version.
 709 I tend to also ensure build hardening is enabled, if it prove to be
 710 easy, and check if I can easily fix any lintian issues or bug reports.
 711 If the process took more than 20 minutes, I dropped it and moved on to
 712 another package.</p>
 713
 714 <p>If I found patches in debian/patches/ that were not yet passed
 715 upstream, I would send an email to make sure upstream know about them.
 716 This has proved to be a valuable step, and caused several new releases
 717 for software that initially appeared abandoned. :)</p>
 718
 719 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 720 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 721 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 722
 723       </div>
 724       <div class="tags">
 725
 726
 727         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 728
 729
 730       </div>
 731     </div>
 732     <div class="padding"></div>
 733
 734     <div class="entry">
 735       <div class="title">
 736         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_from_the_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">Some notes from the 2024 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</a>
 737       </div>
 738       <div class="date">
 739         10th July 2024
 740       </div>
 741       <div class="body">
 742         <p>The Norwegian <a href="https://linuxcnc.org/">The LinuxCNC</a>
 743 developer gathering 2024 is over.  It was a great and productive
 744 weekend, and I am sad that it is over.</p>
 745
 746 <p>Regular readers probably still remember what LinuxCNC is, but her
 747 is a quick summary for those that forgot?  LinuxCNC is a free software
 748 system for numerical control of machines such as milling machines,
 749 lathes, plasma cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and
 750 hexapods.  It eats G-code and produce motor movement and other changes
 751 to the physical world, while reading sensor input.</p>
 752
 753 <p>I am not quite sure about the total head count, as not all people
 754 were present at the gathering the entire weekend, but I believe it was
 755 close to 10 people showing their faces at the gathering.  The "hard
 756 core" of the group, who stayed the entire weekend, were two from
 757 Norway, two from Germany and one from England.  I am happy with the
 758 outcome from the gathering.  We managed to wrap up a new stable
 759 LinuxCNC release 2.9.3 and even tested it on real hardware within
 760 minutes of the release.  The release notes for 2.9.3 are still being
 761 written, but should show up on on the project site in the next few
 762 days.  We managed to go through around twenty pull requests and merge
 763 then into either the stable release (2.9) or the development branch
 764 (master).  There are still around thirty pull requests left to
 765 process, so we are not out of work yet.  We even managed to
 766 fix/improve a slightly worn lathe, and experiment with running a
 767 mechanical clock using G-code.</p>
 768
 769 <p>The evening barbeque worked well both on Saturday and Sunday.  It
 770 is quite fun to light up a charcoal grill using compressed air.  Sadly
 771 the weather was not the best, so we stayed indoors most of the
 772 time.</p>
 773
 774 <p>This gathering was made possible partly with sponsoring from both
 775 <a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill Linpro</a>,
 776 <a href="https://debian.org/">Debian</a> and
 777 <a href="https://nuugfoundation.no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, and we are
 778 most grateful for the support.  I would also like to thank the local
 779 school for lending us some furniture, and of course the rest of the
 780 members of the organizers team, Asle and Bosse, for their countless
 781 contributions.  The gathering was such success that we want to do it
 782 again next year.</p>
 783
 784 <p>We plan to organize the next Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering
 785 at the end of June next year, the weekend Friday 27th to Sunday 29th
 786 of June 2025.  I recommend you reserve the dates on your calendar
 787 today.  Other related communities are also welcome to join in, for
 788 example those working on systems like FreeCAD and opencamlib, as I am
 789 sure we have much in common and sharing experiences would be very
 790 useful to all involved.  We are of course looking for sponsors for
 791 this gathering already.  The total budget for this gathering was
 792 around NOK 25.000 (around EUR 2.300), so our needs are quite modest.
 793 Perhaps a machine or tools company would like to help out the free
 794 software manufacturing community by sponsoring food, lodging and
 795 transport for such gathering?</p>
 796
 797       </div>
 798       <div class="tags">
 799
 800
 801         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>.
 802
 803
 804       </div>
 805     </div>
 806     <div class="padding"></div>
 807
 808     <div class="entry">
 809       <div class="title">
 810         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The 2024 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</a>
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="date">
 813         31st May 2024
 814       </div>
 815       <div class="body">
 816         <p><a href="https://linuxcnc.org/">The LinuxCNC project</a> is still
 817 going strong.  And I believe this great software system for numerical control of
 818 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
 819 cutting machines, robots and hexapods, would do even better with more
 820 in-person developer gatherings, so we plan to organise such gathering
 821 this summer too.</p>
 822
 823 <p>The Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering take place the weekend
 824 Friday July 5th to 7th this year, and is open for everyone interested
 825 in contributing to LinuxCNC and free software manufacturing.  Up to
 826 date information about the gathering can be found in
 827 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/123eaae0-f3b9-4170-a251-b7d608f1e974%40bofh.no/">the
 828 developer mailing list thread</a> where the gathering was announced.
 829 Thanks to the good people at
 830
 831 <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> as well as leftover money
 832 from last years gathering from
 833 <a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro</a> and
 834 <a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, we
 835 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and probably also shelter
 836 for the people traveling from afar to join us.  If you would like to
 837 join the gathering, get in touch and add your details on
 838 <a href="https://pad.efn.no/p/linuxcnc-2024-norway">the pad</a>.</p>
 839
 840 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 841 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 842 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 843
 844       </div>
 845       <div class="tags">
 846
 847
 848         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>.
 849
 850
 851       </div>
 852     </div>
 853     <div class="padding"></div>
 854
 855     <div class="entry">
 856       <div class="title">
 857         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/45_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__391_to_go.html">45 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 391 to go</a>
 858       </div>
 859       <div class="date">
 860         25th April 2024
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="body">
 863         <p>Nine days ago, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages with no
 864 version control system listed in debian/control of the source to git.
 865 At the time there were 438 such packages.  Now there are 391,
 866 according to the UDD.  In reality it is slightly less, as there is a
 867 delay between uploads and UDD updates.  In the nine days since, I have
 868 thus been able to work my way through ten percent of the packages.  I
 869 am starting to run out of steam, and hope someone else will also help
 870 brushing some dust of these packages.  Here is a recipe how to do it.
 871
 872 I start by picking a random package by querying the UDD for a list of
 873 10 random packages from the set of remaining packages:
 874
 875 <blockquote><pre>
 876 PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
 877   --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
 878    where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
 879    OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
 880    OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
 881    order by random() limit 10;"
 882 </pre></blockquote>
 883
 884 <p>Next, I visit http://salsa.debian.org/debian and search for the
 885 package name, to ensure no git repository already exist.  If it does,
 886 I clone it and try to get it to an uploadable state, and add the Vcs-*
 887 entries in d/control to make the repository more widely known.  These
 888 packages are a minority, so I will not cover that use case here.</p>
 889
 890 <p>For packages without an existing git repository, I run the
 891 following script <tt>debian-snap-to-salsa</tt> to prepare a git
 892 repository with the existing packaging.</p>
 893
 894 <blockquote><pre>
 895 #!/bin/sh
 896 #
 897 # See also https://bugs.debian.org/804722#31
 898
 899 set -e
 900
 901 # Move to this Standards-Version.
 902 SV_LATEST=4.7.0
 903
 904 PKG="$1"
 905
 906 if [ -z "$PKG" ]; then
 907     echo "usage: $0 <pkgname>"
 908     exit 1
 909 fi
 910
 911 if [ -e "${PKG}-salsa" ]; then
 912     echo "error: ${PKG}-salsa already exist, aborting."
 913     exit 1
 914 fi
 915
 916 if [ -z "ALLOWFAILURE" ] ; then
 917     ALLOWFAILURE=false
 918 fi
 919
 920 # Fetch every snapshotted source package.  Manually loop until all
 921 # transfers succeed, as 'gbp import-dscs --debsnap' do not fail on
 922 # download failures.
 923 until debsnap --force -v $PKG || $ALLOWFAILURE ; do sleep 1; done
 924 mkdir ${PKG}-salsa; cd ${PKG}-salsa
 925 git init
 926
 927 # Specify branches to override any debian/gbp.conf file present in the
 928 # source package.
 929 gbp import-dscs  --debian-branch=master --upstream-branch=upstream \
 930     --pristine-tar ../source-$PKG/*.dsc
 931
 932 # Add Vcs pointing to Salsa Debian project (must be manually created
 933 # and pushed to).
 934 if ! grep -q ^Vcs- debian/control ; then
 935     awk "BEGIN { s=1 } /^\$/ { if (s==1) { print \"Vcs-Browser: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG\"; print \"Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG.git\" }; s=0 } { print }" < debian/control > debian/control.new && mv debian/control.new debian/control
 936     git commit -m "Updated vcs in d/control to Salsa." debian/control
 937 fi
 938
 939 # Tell gbp to enforce the use of pristine-tar.
 940 inifile +inifile debian/gbp.conf +create +section DEFAULT +key pristine-tar +value True
 941 git add debian/gbp.conf
 942 git commit -m "Added d/gbp.conf to enforce the use of pristine-tar." debian/gbp.conf
 943
 944 # Update to latest Standards-Version.
 945 SV="$(grep ^Standards-Version: debian/control|awk '{print $2}')"
 946 if [ $SV_LATEST != $SV ]; then
 947     sed -i "s/\(Standards-Version: \)\(.*\)/\1$SV_LATEST/" debian/control
 948     git commit -m "Updated Standards-Version from $SV to $SV_LATEST." debian/control
 949 fi
 950
 951 if grep -q pkg-config debian/control; then
 952     sed -i s/pkg-config/pkgconf/ debian/control
 953     git commit -m "Replaced obsolete pkg-config build dependency with pkgconf." debian/control
 954 fi
 955
 956 if grep -q libncurses5-dev debian/control; then
 957     sed -i s/libncurses5-dev/libncurses-dev/ debian/control
 958     git commit -m "Replaced obsolete libncurses5-dev build dependency with libncurses-dev." debian/control
 959 fi
 960 </pre></blockquote>
 961
 962 Some times the debsnap script fail to download some of the versions.
 963 In those cases I investigate, and if I decide the failing versions
 964 will not be missed, I call it using ALLOWFAILURE=true to ignore the
 965 problem and create the git repository anyway.</p>
 966
 967 <p>With the git repository in place, I do a test build (gbp
 968 buildpackage) to ensure the build is actually working.  If it does not
 969 I pick a different package, or if the build failure is trivial to fix,
 970 I fix it before continuing.  At this stage I revisit
 971 http://salsa.debian.org/debian and create the project under this group
 972 for the package.  I then follow the instructions to publish the local
 973 git repository.  Here is from a recent example:</p>
 974
 975 <blockquote><pre>
 976 git remote add origin git@salsa.debian.org:debian/perl-byacc.git
 977 git push --set-upstream origin master upstream pristine-tar
 978 git push --tags
 979 </pre></blockquote>
 980
 981 <p>With a working build, I have a look at the build rules if I want to
 982 remove some more dust.  I normally try to move to debhelper compat
 983 level 13, which involves removing debian/compat and modifying
 984 debian/control to build depend on debhelper-compat (=13).  I also test
 985 with 'Rules-Requires-Root: no' in debian/control and verify in
 986 debian/rules that hardening is enabled, and include all of these if
 987 the package still build.  If it fail to build with level 13, I try
 988 with 12, 11, 10 and so on until I find a level where it build, as I do
 989 not want to spend a lot of time fixing build issues.</p>
 990
 991 <p>Some times, when I feel inspired, I make sure debian/copyright is
 992 converted to the machine readable format, often by starting with
 993 'debhelper -cc' and then cleaning up the autogenerated content until
 994 it matches realities.  If I feel like it, I might also clean up
 995 non-dh-based debian/rules files to use the short style dh build
 996 rules.</p>
 997
 998 <p>Once I have removed all the dust I care to process for the package,
 999 I run 'gbp dch' to generate a debian/changelog entry based on the
1000 commits done so far, run 'dch -r' to switch from 'UNRELEASED' to
1001 'unstable' and get an editor to make sure the 'QA upload' marker is in
1002 place and that all long commit descriptions are wrapped into sensible
1003 lengths, run 'debcommit --release -a' to commit and tag the new
1004 debian/changelog entry, run 'debuild -S' to build a source only
1005 package, and 'dput ../perl-byacc_2.0-10_source.changes' to do the
1006 upload.  During the entire process, and many times per step, I run
1007 'debuild' to verify the changes done still work.  I also some times
1008 verify the set of built files using 'find debian' to see if I can spot
1009 any problems (like no file in usr/bin any more or empty package).  I
1010 also try to fix all lintian issues reported at the end of each
1011 'debuild' run.</p>
1012
1013 <p>If I find Debian specific patches, I try to ensure their metadata
1014 is fairly up to date and some times I even try to reach out to
1015 upstream, to make the upstream project aware of the patches.  Most of
1016 my emails bounce, so the success rate is low.  For projects with no
1017 Homepage entry in debian/control I try to track down one, and for
1018 packages with no debian/watch file I try to create one.  But at least
1019 for some of the packages I have been unable to find a functioning
1020 upstream, and must skip both of these.</p>
1021
1022 <p>If I could handle ten percent in nine days, twenty people could
1023 complete the rest in less then five days.  I use approximately twenty
1024 minutes per package, when I have twenty minutes spare time to spend.
1025 Perhaps you got twenty minutes to spare too?</p>
1026
1027 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1028 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1029 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1030
1031 <p><strong>Update 2024-05-04:</strong> There is
1032 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-05-04-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh">an
1033 updated edition of my migration script</a>, last updated
1034 2024-05-04.</p>
1035
1036       </div>
1037       <div class="tags">
1038
1039
1040         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1041
1042
1043       </div>
1044     </div>
1045     <div class="padding"></div>
1046
1047     <div class="entry">
1048       <div class="title">
1049         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">Time to move orphaned Debian packages to git</a>
1050       </div>
1051       <div class="date">
1052         14th April 2024
1053       </div>
1054       <div class="body">
1055         <p>There are several packages in Debian without a associated git
1056 repository with the packaging history.  This is unfortunate and it
1057 would be nice if more of these would do so.  Quote a lot of these are
1058 without a maintainer, ie listed as maintained by the
1059 '<a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=packages%40qa.debian.org">Debian
1060 QA Group</a>' place holder.  In fact, 438 packages have this property
1061 according to UDD (<tt>SELECT source FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid'
1062 AND (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' OR vcs_browser ilike
1063 '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND
1064 maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%';</tt>).  Such packages can
1065 be updated without much coordination by any Debian developer, as they
1066 are considered orphaned.</p>
1067
1068 <p>To try to improve the situation and reduce the number of packages
1069 without associated git repository, I started a few days ago to search
1070 out candiates and provide them with a git repository under the
1071 'debian' collaborative Salsa project.  I started with the packages
1072 pointing to obsolete Alioth git repositories, and am now working my
1073 way across the ones completely without git references.  In addition to
1074 updating the Vcs-* debian/control fields, I try to update
1075 Standards-Version, debhelper compat level, simplify d/rules, switch to
1076 Rules-Requires-Root: no and fix lintian issues reported.  I only
1077 implement those that are trivial to fix, to avoid spending too much
1078 time on each orphaned package.  So far my experience is that it take
1079 aproximately 20 minutes to convert a package without any git
1080 references, and a lot more for packages with existing git repositories
1081 incompatible with git-buildpackages.</p>
1082
1083 <p>So far I have converted 10 packages, and I will keep going until I
1084 run out of steam.  As should be clear from the numbers, there is
1085 enough packages remaining for more people to do the same without
1086 stepping on each others toes.  I find it useful to start by searching
1087 for a git repo already on salsa, as I find that some times a git repo
1088 has already been created, but no new version is uploaded to Debian
1089 yet.  In those cases I start with the existing git repository.  I
1090 convert to the git-buildpackage+pristine-tar workflow, and ensure a
1091 debian/gbp.conf file with "pristine-tar=True" is added early, to avoid
1092 uploading a orig.tar.gz with the wrong checksum by mistake.  Did that
1093 three times in the begin before I remembered my mistake.</p>
1094
1095 <p>So, if you are a Debian Developer and got some spare time, perhaps
1096 considering migrating some orphaned packages to git?</p>
1097
1098 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1099 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1100 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1101
1102       </div>
1103       <div class="tags">
1104
1105
1106         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1107
1108
1109       </div>
1110     </div>
1111     <div class="padding"></div>
1112
1113     <div class="entry">
1114       <div class="title">
1115         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_and_improved_sqlcipher_in_Debian_for_accessing_Signal_database.html">New and improved sqlcipher in Debian for accessing Signal database</a>
1116       </div>
1117       <div class="date">
1118         12th November 2023
1119       </div>
1120       <div class="body">
1121         <p>For a while now I wanted to have direct access to the
1122 <a href="https://signal.org/">Signal</a> database of messages and
1123 channels of my Desktop edition of Signal.  I prefer the enforced end
1124 to end encryption of Signal these days for my communication with
1125 friends and family, to increase the level of safety and privacy as
1126 well as raising the cost of the mass surveillance government and
1127 non-government entities practice these days.  In August I came across
1128 a nice
1129 <a href="https://www.yoranbrondsema.com/post/the-guide-to-extracting-statistics-from-your-signal-conversations/">recipe
1130 on how to use sqlcipher to extract statistics from the Signal
1131 database</a> explaining how to do this.  Unfortunately this did not
1132 work with the version of sqlcipher in Debian.  The
1133 <a href="http://tracker.debian.org/sqlcipher/">sqlcipher</a>
1134 package is a "fork" of the sqlite package with added support for
1135 encrypted databases.  Sadly the current Debian maintainer
1136 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/961598">announced more than three
1137 years ago that he did not have time to maintain sqlcipher</a>, so it
1138 seemed unlikely to be upgraded by the maintainer.  I was reluctant to
1139 take on the job myself, as I have very limited experience maintaining
1140 shared libraries in Debian.  After waiting and hoping for a few
1141 months, I gave up the last  week, and set out to update the package.  In
1142 the process I orphaned it to make it more obvious for the next person
1143 looking at it that the package need proper maintenance.</p>
1144
1145 <p>The version in Debian was around five years old, and quite a lot of
1146 changes had taken place upstream into the Debian maintenance git
1147 repository.  After spending a few days importing the new upstream
1148 versions, realising that upstream did not care much for SONAME
1149 versioning as I saw library symbols being both added and removed with
1150 minor version number changes to the project, I concluded that I had to
1151 do a SONAME bump of the library package to avoid surprising the
1152 reverse dependencies.  I even added a simple
1153 autopkgtest script to ensure the package work as intended.  Dug deep
1154 into the hole of learning shared library maintenance, I set out a few
1155 days ago to upload the new version to Debian experimental to see what
1156 the quality assurance framework in Debian had to say about the result.
1157 The feedback told me the pacakge was not too shabby, and yesterday I
1158 uploaded the latest version to Debian unstable.  It should enter
1159 testing today or tomorrow, perhaps delayed by
1160 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1055812">a small library
1161 transition</a>.</p>
1162
1163 <p>Armed with a new version of sqlcipher, I can now have a look at the
1164 SQL database in ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite.  First, one need to
1165 fetch the encryption key from the Signal configuration using this
1166 simple JSON extraction command:</p>
1167
1168 <pre>/usr/bin/jq -r '."key"' ~/.config/Signal/config.json</pre>
1169
1170 <p>Assuming the result from that command is 'secretkey', which is a
1171 hexadecimal number representing the key used to encrypt the database.
1172 Next, one can now connect to the database and inject the encryption
1173 key for access via SQL to fetch information from the database.  Here
1174 is an example dumping the database structure:</p>
1175
1176 <pre>
1177 % sqlcipher ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite
1178 sqlite> PRAGMA key = "x'secretkey'";
1179 sqlite> .schema
1180 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat1(tbl,idx,stat);
1181 CREATE TABLE conversations(
1182       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1183       json TEXT,
1184
1185       active_at INTEGER,
1186       type STRING,
1187       members TEXT,
1188       name TEXT,
1189       profileName TEXT
1190     , profileFamilyName TEXT, profileFullName TEXT, e164 TEXT, serviceId TEXT, groupId TEXT, profileLastFetchedAt INTEGER);
1191 CREATE TABLE identityKeys(
1192       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1193       json TEXT
1194     );
1195 CREATE TABLE items(
1196       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1197       json TEXT
1198     );
1199 CREATE TABLE sessions(
1200       id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1201       conversationId TEXT,
1202       json TEXT
1203     , ourServiceId STRING, serviceId STRING);
1204 CREATE TABLE attachment_downloads(
1205     id STRING primary key,
1206     timestamp INTEGER,
1207     pending INTEGER,
1208     json TEXT
1209   );
1210 CREATE TABLE sticker_packs(
1211     id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1212     key TEXT NOT NULL,
1213
1214     author STRING,
1215     coverStickerId INTEGER,
1216     createdAt INTEGER,
1217     downloadAttempts INTEGER,
1218     installedAt INTEGER,
1219     lastUsed INTEGER,
1220     status STRING,
1221     stickerCount INTEGER,
1222     title STRING
1223   , attemptedStatus STRING, position INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync
1224       INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
1225 CREATE TABLE stickers(
1226     id INTEGER NOT NULL,
1227     packId TEXT NOT NULL,
1228
1229     emoji STRING,
1230     height INTEGER,
1231     isCoverOnly INTEGER,
1232     lastUsed INTEGER,
1233     path STRING,
1234     width INTEGER,
1235
1236     PRIMARY KEY (id, packId),
1237     CONSTRAINT stickers_fk
1238       FOREIGN KEY (packId)
1239       REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
1240       ON DELETE CASCADE
1241   );
1242 CREATE TABLE sticker_references(
1243     messageId STRING,
1244     packId TEXT,
1245     CONSTRAINT sticker_references_fk
1246       FOREIGN KEY(packId)
1247       REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
1248       ON DELETE CASCADE
1249   );
1250 CREATE TABLE emojis(
1251     shortName TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1252     lastUsage INTEGER
1253   );
1254 CREATE TABLE messages(
1255         rowid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1256         id STRING UNIQUE,
1257         json TEXT,
1258         readStatus INTEGER,
1259         expires_at INTEGER,
1260         sent_at INTEGER,
1261         schemaVersion INTEGER,
1262         conversationId STRING,
1263         received_at INTEGER,
1264         source STRING,
1265         hasAttachments INTEGER,
1266         hasFileAttachments INTEGER,
1267         hasVisualMediaAttachments INTEGER,
1268         expireTimer INTEGER,
1269         expirationStartTimestamp INTEGER,
1270         type STRING,
1271         body TEXT,
1272         messageTimer INTEGER,
1273         messageTimerStart INTEGER,
1274         messageTimerExpiresAt INTEGER,
1275         isErased INTEGER,
1276         isViewOnce INTEGER,
1277         sourceServiceId TEXT, serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, storyId STRING, isStory INTEGER
1278         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (type IS 'story'), isChangeCreatedByUs INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isTimerChangeFromSync INTEGER
1279         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1280           json_extract(json, '$.expirationTimerUpdate.fromSync') IS 1
1281         ), seenStatus NUMBER default 0, storyDistributionListId STRING, expiresAt INT
1282         GENERATED ALWAYS
1283         AS (ifnull(
1284           expirationStartTimestamp + (expireTimer * 1000),
1285           9007199254740991
1286         )), shouldAffectActivity INTEGER
1287         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1288           type IS NULL
1289           OR
1290           type NOT IN (
1291             'change-number-notification',
1292             'contact-removed-notification',
1293             'conversation-merge',
1294             'group-v1-migration',
1295             'keychange',
1296             'message-history-unsynced',
1297             'profile-change',
1298             'story',
1299             'universal-timer-notification',
1300             'verified-change'
1301           )
1302         ), shouldAffectPreview INTEGER
1303         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1304           type IS NULL
1305           OR
1306           type NOT IN (
1307             'change-number-notification',
1308             'contact-removed-notification',
1309             'conversation-merge',
1310             'group-v1-migration',
1311             'keychange',
1312             'message-history-unsynced',
1313             'profile-change',
1314             'story',
1315             'universal-timer-notification',
1316             'verified-change'
1317           )
1318         ), isUserInitiatedMessage INTEGER
1319         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1320           type IS NULL
1321           OR
1322           type NOT IN (
1323             'change-number-notification',
1324             'contact-removed-notification',
1325             'conversation-merge',
1326             'group-v1-migration',
1327             'group-v2-change',
1328             'keychange',
1329             'message-history-unsynced',
1330             'profile-change',
1331             'story',
1332             'universal-timer-notification',
1333             'verified-change'
1334           )
1335         ), mentionsMe INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isGroupLeaveEvent INTEGER
1336         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1337           type IS 'group-v2-change' AND
1338           json_array_length(json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details')) IS 1 AND
1339           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[0].type') IS 'member-remove' AND
1340           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS NOT NULL AND
1341           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[0].aci')
1342         ), isGroupLeaveEventFromOther INTEGER
1343         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1344           isGroupLeaveEvent IS 1
1345           AND
1346           isChangeCreatedByUs IS 0
1347         ), callId TEXT
1348         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1349           json_extract(json, '$.callId')
1350         ));
1351 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat4(tbl,idx,neq,nlt,ndlt,sample);
1352 CREATE TABLE jobs(
1353         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1354         queueType TEXT STRING NOT NULL,
1355         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1356         data STRING TEXT
1357       );
1358 CREATE TABLE reactions(
1359         conversationId STRING,
1360         emoji STRING,
1361         fromId STRING,
1362         messageReceivedAt INTEGER,
1363         targetAuthorAci STRING,
1364         targetTimestamp INTEGER,
1365         unread INTEGER
1366       , messageId STRING);
1367 CREATE TABLE senderKeys(
1368         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1369         senderId TEXT NOT NULL,
1370         distributionId TEXT NOT NULL,
1371         data BLOB NOT NULL,
1372         lastUpdatedDate NUMBER NOT NULL
1373       );
1374 CREATE TABLE unprocessed(
1375         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1376         timestamp INTEGER,
1377         version INTEGER,
1378         attempts INTEGER,
1379         envelope TEXT,
1380         decrypted TEXT,
1381         source TEXT,
1382         serverTimestamp INTEGER,
1383         sourceServiceId STRING
1384       , serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, receivedAtCounter INTEGER, urgent INTEGER, story INTEGER);
1385 CREATE TABLE sendLogPayloads(
1386         id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1387
1388         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1389         contentHint INTEGER NOT NULL,
1390         proto BLOB NOT NULL
1391       , urgent INTEGER, hasPniSignatureMessage INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
1392 CREATE TABLE sendLogRecipients(
1393         payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1394
1395         recipientServiceId STRING NOT NULL,
1396         deviceId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1397
1398         PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, recipientServiceId, deviceId),
1399
1400         CONSTRAINT sendLogRecipientsForeignKey
1401           FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
1402           REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
1403           ON DELETE CASCADE
1404       );
1405 CREATE TABLE sendLogMessageIds(
1406         payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1407
1408         messageId STRING NOT NULL,
1409
1410         PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, messageId),
1411
1412         CONSTRAINT sendLogMessageIdsForeignKey
1413           FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
1414           REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
1415           ON DELETE CASCADE
1416       );
1417 CREATE TABLE preKeys(
1418         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1419         json TEXT
1420       , ourServiceId NUMBER
1421         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
1422 CREATE TABLE signedPreKeys(
1423         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1424         json TEXT
1425       , ourServiceId NUMBER
1426         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
1427 CREATE TABLE badges(
1428         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1429         category TEXT NOT NULL,
1430         name TEXT NOT NULL,
1431         descriptionTemplate TEXT NOT NULL
1432       );
1433 CREATE TABLE badgeImageFiles(
1434         badgeId TEXT REFERENCES badges(id)
1435           ON DELETE CASCADE
1436           ON UPDATE CASCADE,
1437         'order' INTEGER NOT NULL,
1438         url TEXT NOT NULL,
1439         localPath TEXT,
1440         theme TEXT NOT NULL
1441       );
1442 CREATE TABLE storyReads (
1443         authorId STRING NOT NULL,
1444         conversationId STRING NOT NULL,
1445         storyId STRING NOT NULL,
1446         storyReadDate NUMBER NOT NULL,
1447
1448         PRIMARY KEY (authorId, storyId)
1449       );
1450 CREATE TABLE storyDistributions(
1451         id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1452         name TEXT,
1453
1454         senderKeyInfoJson STRING
1455       , deletedAtTimestamp INTEGER, allowsReplies INTEGER, isBlockList INTEGER, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync INTEGER);
1456 CREATE TABLE storyDistributionMembers(
1457         listId STRING NOT NULL REFERENCES storyDistributions(id)
1458           ON DELETE CASCADE
1459           ON UPDATE CASCADE,
1460         serviceId STRING NOT NULL,
1461
1462         PRIMARY KEY (listId, serviceId)
1463       );
1464 CREATE TABLE uninstalled_sticker_packs (
1465         id STRING NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
1466         uninstalledAt NUMBER NOT NULL,
1467         storageID STRING,
1468         storageVersion NUMBER,
1469         storageUnknownFields BLOB,
1470         storageNeedsSync INTEGER NOT NULL
1471       );
1472 CREATE TABLE groupCallRingCancellations(
1473         ringId INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
1474         createdAt INTEGER NOT NULL
1475       );
1476 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_data'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, block BLOB);
1477 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_idx'(segid, term, pgno, PRIMARY KEY(segid, term)) WITHOUT ROWID;
1478 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_content'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0);
1479 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_docsize'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, sz BLOB);
1480 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_config'(k PRIMARY KEY, v) WITHOUT ROWID;
1481 CREATE TABLE edited_messages(
1482         messageId STRING REFERENCES messages(id)
1483           ON DELETE CASCADE,
1484         sentAt INTEGER,
1485         readStatus INTEGER
1486       , conversationId STRING);
1487 CREATE TABLE mentions (
1488         messageId REFERENCES messages(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
1489         mentionAci STRING,
1490         start INTEGER,
1491         length INTEGER
1492       );
1493 CREATE TABLE kyberPreKeys(
1494         id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1495         json TEXT NOT NULL, ourServiceId NUMBER
1496         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
1497 CREATE TABLE callsHistory (
1498         callId TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1499         peerId TEXT NOT NULL, -- conversation id (legacy) | uuid | groupId | roomId
1500         ringerId TEXT DEFAULT NULL, -- ringer uuid
1501         mode TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Direct" | "Group"
1502         type TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Audio" | "Video" | "Group"
1503         direction TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Incoming" | "Outgoing
1504         -- Direct: enum "Pending" | "Missed" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
1505         -- Group: enum "GenericGroupCall" | "OutgoingRing" | "Ringing" | "Joined" | "Missed" | "Declined" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
1506         status TEXT NOT NULL,
1507         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1508         UNIQUE (callId, peerId) ON CONFLICT FAIL
1509       );
1510 [ dropped all indexes to save space in this blog post ]
1511 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_view_once_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1512       WHEN
1513         new.body IS NOT NULL AND new.isViewOnce = 1
1514       BEGIN
1515         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1516       END;
1517 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert AFTER INSERT ON messages
1518       WHEN new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
1519       BEGIN
1520         INSERT INTO messages_fts
1521           (rowid, body)
1522         VALUES
1523           (new.rowid, new.body);
1524       END;
1525 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_delete AFTER DELETE ON messages BEGIN
1526         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1527         DELETE FROM sendLogPayloads WHERE id IN (
1528           SELECT payloadId FROM sendLogMessageIds
1529           WHERE messageId = old.id
1530         );
1531         DELETE FROM reactions WHERE rowid IN (
1532           SELECT rowid FROM reactions
1533           WHERE messageId = old.id
1534         );
1535         DELETE FROM storyReads WHERE storyId = old.storyId;
1536       END;
1537 CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE messages_fts USING fts5(
1538         body,
1539         tokenize = 'signal_tokenizer'
1540       );
1541 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1542       WHEN
1543         (new.body IS NULL OR old.body IS NOT new.body) AND
1544          new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
1545       BEGIN
1546         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1547         INSERT INTO messages_fts
1548           (rowid, body)
1549         VALUES
1550           (new.rowid, new.body);
1551       END;
1552 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert_insert_mentions AFTER INSERT ON messages
1553       BEGIN
1554         INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
1555
1556     SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
1557       bodyRanges.value ->> 'start' as start,
1558       bodyRanges.value ->> 'length' as length
1559     FROM messages, json_each(messages.json ->> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
1560     WHERE bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
1561
1562         AND messages.id = new.id;
1563       END;
1564 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update_update_mentions AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1565       BEGIN
1566         DELETE FROM mentions WHERE messageId = new.id;
1567         INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
1568
1569     SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
1570       bodyRanges.value ->> 'start' as start,
1571       bodyRanges.value ->> 'length' as length
1572     FROM messages, json_each(messages.json ->> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
1573     WHERE bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
1574
1575         AND messages.id = new.id;
1576       END;
1577 sqlite>
1578 </pre>
1579
1580 <p>Finally I have the tool needed to inspect and process Signal
1581 messages that I need, without using the vendor provided client.  Now
1582 on to transforming it to a more useful format.</p>
1583
1584 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1585 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1586 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1587
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="tags">
1590
1591
1592         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1593
1594
1595       </div>
1596     </div>
1597     <div class="padding"></div>
1598
1599     <div class="entry">
1600       <div class="title">
1601         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_17.html">New chrpath release 0.17</a>
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="date">
1604         10th November 2023
1605       </div>
1606       <div class="body">
1607         <p>The chrpath package provide a simple command line tool to remove or
1608 modify the rpath or runpath of compiled ELF program.  It is almost 10
1609 years since I updated the code base, but I stumbled over the tool
1610 today, and decided it was time to move the code base from Subversion
1611 to git and find a new home for it, as the previous one (Debian Alioth)
1612 has been shut down.  I decided to go with
1613 <a href="https://codeberg.org/">Codeberg</a> this time, as it is my git
1614 service of choice these days, did a quick and dirty migration to git
1615 and updated the code with a few patches I found in the Debian bug
1616 tracker.  These are the release notes:</p>
1617
1618 <p>New in 0.17 released 2023-11-10:</p>
1619
1620 <ul>
1621 <li>Moved project to Codeberg, as Alioth is shut down.</li>
1622 <li>Add Solaris support (use &lt;sys/byteorder.h> instead of &lt;byteswap.h>).
1623    Patch from Rainer Orth.</li>
1624 <li>Added missing newline from printf() line.  Patch from Frank Dana.</li>
1625 <li>Corrected handling of multiple ELF sections. Patch from Frank Dana.</li>
1626 <li>Updated build rules for .deb.  Partly based on patch from djcj.</li>
1627 </ul>
1628
1629 <p>The latest edition is tagged and available from
1630 <a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath">https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath</a>.
1631
1632 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1633 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1634 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1635
1636       </div>
1637       <div class="tags">
1638
1639
1640         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1641
1642
1643       </div>
1644     </div>
1645     <div class="padding"></div>
1646
1647     <div class="entry">
1648       <div class="title">
1649         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Test_framework_for_DocBook_processors___formatters.html">Test framework for DocBook processors / formatters</a>
1650       </div>
1651       <div class="date">
1652          5th November 2023
1653       </div>
1654       <div class="body">
1655         <p>All the books I have published so far has been using
1656 <a href="https://docbook.org/">DocBook</a> somewhere in the process.
1657 For the first book, the source format was DocBook, while for every
1658 later book it was an intermediate format used as the stepping stone to
1659 be able to present the same manuscript in several formats, on paper,
1660 as ebook in ePub format, as a HTML page and as a PDF file either for
1661 paper production or for Internet consumption.  This is made possible
1662 with a wide variety of free software tools with DocBook support in
1663 Debian.  The source format of later books have been docx via rst,
1664 Markdown, Filemaker and Asciidoc, and for all of these I was able to
1665 generate a suitable DocBook file for further processing using
1666 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pandoc">pandoc</a>,
1667 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoc">a2x</a> and
1668 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoctor">asciidoctor</a>,
1669 as well as rendering using
1670 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xmlto">xmlto</a>,
1671 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dbtoepub">dbtoepub</a>,
1672 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dblatex">dblatex</a>,
1673 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/docbook-xsl">docbook-xsl</a> and
1674 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fop">fop</a>.</p>
1675
1676 <p>Most of the <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/">books I
1677 have published</a> are translated books, with English as the source
1678 language.  The use of
1679 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/po4a">po4a</a> to
1680 handle translations using the gettext PO format has been a blessing,
1681 but publishing translated books had triggered the need to ensure the
1682 DocBook tools handle relevant languages correctly.  For every new
1683 language I have published, I had to submit patches dblatex, dbtoepub
1684 and docbook-xsl fixing incorrect language and country specific issues
1685 in the framework themselves.  Typically this has been missing keywords
1686 like 'figure' or sort ordering of index entries.  After a while it
1687 became tiresome to only discover issues like this by accident, and I
1688 decided to write a DocBook "test framework" exercising various
1689 features of DocBook and allowing me to see all features exercised for
1690 a given language.  It consist of a set of DocBook files, a version 4
1691 book, a version 5 book, a v4 book set, a v4 selection of problematic
1692 tables, one v4 testing sidefloat and finally one v4 testing a book of
1693 articles.  The DocBook files are accompanied with a set of build rules
1694 for building PDF using dblatex and docbook-xsl/fop, HTML using xmlto
1695 or docbook-xsl and epub using dbtoepub.  The result is a set of files
1696 visualizing footnotes, indexes, table of content list, figures,
1697 formulas and other DocBook features, allowing for a quick review on
1698 the completeness of the given locale settings.  To build with a
1699 different language setting, all one need to do is edit the lang= value
1700 in the .xml file to pick a different ISO 639 code value and run
1701 'make'.</p>
1702
1703 <p>The <a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">test framework
1704 source code</a> is available from Codeberg, and a generated set of
1705 presentations of the various examples is available as Codeberg static
1706 web pages at
1707 <a href="https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/</a>.
1708 Using this test framework I have been able to discover and report
1709 several bugs and missing features in various tools, and got a lot of
1710 them fixed.  For example I got Northern Sami keywords added to both
1711 docbook-xsl and dblatex, fixed several typos in Norwegian bokmål and
1712 Norwegian Nynorsk, support for non-ascii title IDs added to pandoc,
1713 Norwegian index sorting support fixed in xindy and initial Norwegian
1714 Bokmål support added to dblatex.  Some issues still remains, though.
1715 Default index sorting rules are still broken in several tools, so the
1716 Norwegian letters æ, ø and å are more often than not sorted properly
1717 in the book index.</p>
1718
1719 <p>The test framework recently received some more polish, as part of
1720 publishing my latest book.  This book contained a lot of fairly
1721 complex tables, which exposed bugs in some of the tools.  This made me
1722 add a new test file with various tables, as well as spend some time to
1723 brush up the build rules.  My goal is for the test framework to
1724 exercise all DocBook features to make it easier to see which features
1725 work with different processors, and hopefully get them all to support
1726 the full set of DocBook features.  Feel free to send patches to extend
1727 the test set, and test it with your favorite DocBook processor.
1728 Please visit these two URLs to learn more:</p>
1729
1730 <ul>
1731 <li><a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/</a></li>
1732 <li><a href="https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/</a></li>
1733 </ul>
1734
1735 <p>If you want to learn more on Docbook and translations, I recommend
1736 having a look at the <a href="https://docbook.org/">the DocBook
1737 web site</a>,
1738 <a href="https://doccookbook.sourceforge.net/html/en/">the DoCookBook
1739 site<a/> and my earlier blog post on
1740 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">how
1741 the Skolelinux project process and translate documentation</a>,  a talk I gave earlier this year on
1742 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20230314-oversetting-og-publisering-av-b%c3%b8ker-med-fri-programvare/">how
1743 to translate and publish books using free software</a> (Norwegian
1744 only).</p>
1745
1746 <!--
1747
1748 https://github.com/docbook/xslt10-stylesheets/issues/205 (docbook-xsl: sme support)
1749 https://bugs.debian.org/968437 (xindy: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1750 https://bugs.debian.org/856123 (pandoc: markdown to docbook with non-english titles)
1751 https://bugs.debian.org/864813 (dblatex: missing nb words)
1752 https://bugs.debian.org/756386 (dblatex: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1753 https://bugs.debian.org/796871 (dbtoepub: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1754 https://bugs.debian.org/792616 (dblatex: PDF metadata)
1755 https://bugs.debian.org/686908 (docbook-xsl: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1756 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=373747&aid=3556630&group_id=21935 (docbook-xsl: nb/nn support)
1757 https://bugs.debian.org/684391 (dblatex: initial nb support)
1758
1759 -->
1760
1761 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1762 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1763 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1764
1765       </div>
1766       <div class="tags">
1767
1768
1769         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1770
1771
1772       </div>
1773     </div>
1774     <div class="padding"></div>
1775
1776     <div class="entry">
1777       <div class="title">
1778         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html">What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?</a>
1779       </div>
1780       <div class="date">
1781         11th June 2023
1782       </div>
1783       <div class="body">
1784         <p>With yesterdays
1785 <a href="https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610">release of Debian
1786 12 Bookworm</a>, I am happy to know the
1787 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1788 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is available for a wider audience.
1789 I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
1790 about some of the programs connecting to the Internet.  Some programs
1791 are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
1792 clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
1793 were more dubious.  For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
1794 the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
1795 blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it.  Another
1796 surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
1797 mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
1798 web pages.  This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
1799 always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
1800 Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
1801 use Gnome).  It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
1802 permissions.  Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
1803 any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
1804 a time sensitive gaming session.</p>
1805
1806 <p>I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
1807 to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
1808 OpenSnitch (only <tt>apt install opensnitch</tt> away in Debian
1809 Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
1810 your desktop machine.</p>
1811
1812 <p>At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
1813 is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
1814 the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
1815 depending in content in /proc/.  This should enter unstable fairly
1816 soon.</p>
1817
1818 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1819 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1820 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1821
1822 <p><strong>Update 2023-06-12</strong>: I got a tip about
1823 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues">a list of privacy
1824 issues in Free Software</a> and the
1825 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy">#debian-privacy IRC
1826 channel</a> discussing these topics.</p>
1827
1828
1829       </div>
1830       <div class="tags">
1831
1832
1833         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1834
1835
1836       </div>
1837     </div>
1838     <div class="padding"></div>
1839
1840     <div class="entry">
1841       <div class="title">
1842         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html">wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software</a>
1843       </div>
1844       <div class="date">
1845         19th May 2023
1846       </div>
1847       <div class="body">
1848         <p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
1849 gas, electricity or heat distribution meters.  The
1850 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
1851 (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4)</a> provide a cross vendor way
1852 to talk to and collect meter data.  I ran into this standard when I
1853 wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
1854 free software that could do the job.  The meters in question broadcast
1855 encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
1856 part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor.  With this
1857 in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
1858 graphing.</p>
1859
1860 <p>The free software systems in question,
1861 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus</a> to
1862 read the messages from a software defined radio, and
1863 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters</a> to
1864 decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
1865 and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters.  I got in touch
1866 with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
1867 the packages via Debian.  I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
1868 Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
1869 assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
1870 sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive.  Sadly we completed
1871 it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
1872 (Bookworm).  The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue.  It
1873 will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
1874 find a solution soon.</p>
1875
1876 <p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
1877 standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
1878 packages.</p>
1879
1880 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1881 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1882 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1883
1884       </div>
1885       <div class="tags">
1886
1887
1888         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1889
1890
1891       </div>
1892     </div>
1893     <div class="padding"></div>
1894
1895     <div class="entry">
1896       <div class="title">
1897         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The 2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</a>
1898       </div>
1899       <div class="date">
1900         14th May 2023
1901       </div>
1902       <div class="body">
1903         <p>The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days.  A lot of
1904 patches and issues have seen activity on
1905 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/">the project github
1906 pages</a> recently.  A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
1907 over at the <a href="https://tormach.com/">Tormach</a> headquarter in
1908 Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway.  If you
1909 wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:</p>
1910
1911 <blockquote>
1912 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
1913 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
1914 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
1915 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
1916 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
1917 interactive development)."
1918 </blockquote>
1919
1920 <p>The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June 16th
1921 to 18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
1922 to LinuxCNC.  Up to date information about the gathering can be found
1923 in
1924 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251">the
1925 developer mailing list thread</a> where the gathering was announced.
1926 Thanks to the good people at
1927 <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>,
1928 <a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro</a> and
1929 <a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, we
1930 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
1931 traveling from afar to join us.  If you would like to join the
1932 gathering, get in touch.</p>
1933
1934 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1935 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1936 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1937
1938       </div>
1939       <div class="tags">
1940
1941
1942         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>.
1943
1944
1945       </div>
1946     </div>
1947     <div class="padding"></div>
1948
1949     <div class="entry">
1950       <div class="title">
1951         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html">OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time</a>
1952       </div>
1953       <div class="date">
1954         13th May 2023
1955       </div>
1956       <div class="body">
1957         <p>A bit delayed,
1958 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1959 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> package in Debian now got the
1960 latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm.  Because it depend on a
1961 package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
1962 testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
1963 actually working, so the migration was delayed.  A bug in the package
1964 dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
1965 (opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
1966 installed by default.  I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
1967 his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.</p>
1968
1969 <p>Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
1970 connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
1971 offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me.  If you
1972 too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
1973 Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing <tt>apt
1974 install opensnitch</tt> in Bookworm and see what you think.</p>
1975
1976 <p>The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
1977 Debian.  Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
1978 suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
1979 header files to get it working.</p>
1980
1981 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1982 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1983 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1984
1985       </div>
1986       <div class="tags">
1987
1988
1989         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1990
1991
1992       </div>
1993     </div>
1994     <div class="padding"></div>
1995
1996     <div class="entry">
1997       <div class="title">
1998         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html">Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?</a>
1999       </div>
2000       <div class="date">
2001         23rd April 2023
2002       </div>
2003       <div class="body">
2004         <p>While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
2005 it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
2006 transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
2007 stuff I need to write.  The background is that long drives often bring
2008 up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
2009 of the question while driving.  With the release of
2010 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/">OpenAI Whisper</a>, this
2011 seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
2012 go.  OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
2013 audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
2014 audio recording.  It handle multiple languages and according to its
2015 creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
2016 one.  I have not tested the latter feature.  It can either use the CPU
2017 or a GPU with CUDA support.  As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
2018 limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards.  I have few of those, as
2019 they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
2020 the GPU option.  While looking into the matter, I did discover some
2021 work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
2022 the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
2023 spent much time looking into GPU support yet.  I've so far used an old
2024 X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
2025 CPU.</p>
2026
2027 <p>As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
2028 under control of someone else (aka a "cloud" service) to transcribe
2029 ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
2030 system locally on my own computers.  The only sensible approach to me
2031 is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
2032 to upload the needed packages into Debian.  Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
2033 discovered that only three packages were missing,
2034 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034307">tiktoken</a>,
2035 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034144">triton</a>, and
2036 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034091">openai-whisper</a>.  For a while
2037 I also believed
2038 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034286">ffmpeg-python</a> was
2039 needed, but as its
2040 <a href="https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760">upstream
2041 seem to have vanished</a> I found it safer
2042 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242">to rewrite
2043 whisper</a> to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
2044 into Debian.  I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
2045 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team">the Debian Deep
2046 Learning Team</a>, which seem like the best team to look after such
2047 packages.  Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
2048 that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
2049 versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
2050 Bookworm is released.</p>
2051
2052 <p>All required code packages have been now waiting in
2053 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the Debian NEW
2054 queue</a> since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
2055 Bookworm is released.  An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
2056 network models used by Whisper.  The default behaviour of Whisper is
2057 to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
2058 <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt> on first invocation.  This obviously would
2059 fail <a href="https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html">the
2060 deserted island test of free software</a> as the Debian packages would
2061 be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
2062 powered computer on a deserted island.</p>
2063
2064 <p>Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
2065 mirror system.  This is problematic, as the models are very large
2066 files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
2067 infrastructure around the globe.  The strain would be even higher if
2068 the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
2069 not.  The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
2070 for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
2071 either, is 462 MiB (deb is 414 MiB).  The medium model, which to me
2072 seem to handle English speech fairly well is 1.5 GiB (deb is 1.3 GiB)
2073 and the large model is 2.9 GiB (deb is 2.6 GiB).  I would assume
2074 everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
2075 highest quality.  I believe the models themselves would have to go
2076 into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
2077 including any useful source code for updating the models.  The
2078 "source", aka the model training set, according to the creators
2079 consist of "680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
2080 data collected from the web", which to me reads material with both
2081 unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public.  In other
2082 words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
2083 Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.</p>
2084
2085 <p>I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
2086 model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
2087 is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
2088 archive.  In any case I wrote build rules for a
2089 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model">OpenAI
2090 Whisper model package</a> and
2091 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257">modified the
2092 Whisper code base</a> to prefer shared files under <tt>/usr/</tt> and
2093 <tt>/var/</tt> over user specific files in <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt>
2094 to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
2095 possibility.  One solution might be to include only one of the models
2096 (small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
2097 download the others from the Internet.  Not quite sure what to do
2098 here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).</p>
2099
2100 <p>To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
2101 clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm.  I
2102 selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
2103 would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
2104 missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
2105 to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.</p>
2106
2107 <p>Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
2108 Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
2109 first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
2110 then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
2111 and one of the models:</p>
2112
2113 <p><pre>
2114 curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
2115   -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
2116 mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
2117 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2118 deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
2119 deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
2120 EOF
2121 apt update
2122 apt install openai-whisper
2123 </pre></p>
2124
2125 <p>The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
2126 computer than my own.  With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
2127 a 2 minute 40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
2128 model.  This took 11 minutes and around 2.2 GiB of RAM.  Transcribing
2129 the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in 77 minutes
2130 using around 5.2 GiB of RAM.  My test machine had too little memory to
2131 test the large model, which I believe require 11 GiB of RAM.  In
2132 short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
2133 for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.</p>
2134
2135 <p>Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.</p>
2136
2137 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2138 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2139 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2140
2141       </div>
2142       <div class="tags">
2143
2144
2145         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2146
2147
2148       </div>
2149     </div>
2150     <div class="padding"></div>
2151
2152     <div class="entry">
2153       <div class="title">
2154         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html">rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux  - nice free software</a>
2155       </div>
2156       <div class="date">
2157          7th April 2023
2158       </div>
2159       <div class="body">
2160         <p>Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
2161 scanner for my software defined radio.  Just for fun I tried to locate
2162 the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
2163 the frequencies to see what is in use.  I've tried to find a useful
2164 program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
2165 tool.  This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
2166 found a description of
2167 <a href="https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/">rtlsdr-scanner
2168 over at the Kali site</a>, and was able to track down
2169 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git">the
2170 Kali package git repository</a> to build a deb package for the
2171 scanner.  Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
2172 at least in Debian Bullseye.  Two runtime dependencies,
2173 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git">python-visvis</a>
2174 and
2175 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git">python-rtlsdr</a>
2176 had to be built and installed separately.  Luckily '<tt>gbp
2177 buildpackage</tt>' handled them just fine and no further packages had
2178 to be manually built.  The end result worked out of the box after
2179 installation.</p>
2180
2181 <p>My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
2182 scanner was functioning.  But when I tried to scan every frequency
2183 from 100 to 1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
2184 completion.  After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
2185 used rejected frequencies above 948 MHz, triggering a unreported
2186 exception breaking the scan.  Changing the scan to end at 957 worked
2187 better.  I similarly found the lower limit to be around 15, and ended
2188 up with the following full scan:</p>
2189
2190 <p><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png" width="100%"></a></p>
2191
2192 <p>Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
2193 just fine.  I ended up with around 477k CVS lines with dB level for
2194 the given frequency.</p>
2195
2196 <p>The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-8 encoding issue in the
2197 python code.  Will see if I can find time to send a patch
2198 <a href="https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/">upstream</a>
2199 later to fix this exception:</p>
2200
2201 <pre>
2202 Traceback (most recent call last):
2203   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
2204     save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
2205   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
2206     handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
2207 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
2208 Traceback (most recent call last):
2209   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
2210     save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
2211   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
2212     handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
2213 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
2214 </pre>
2215
2216 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2217 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2218 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2219
2220       </div>
2221       <div class="tags">
2222
2223
2224         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2225
2226
2227       </div>
2228     </div>
2229     <div class="padding"></div>
2230
2231     <div class="entry">
2232       <div class="title">
2233         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html">OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm</a>
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="date">
2236         25th February 2023
2237       </div>
2238       <div class="body">
2239         <p>Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
2240 Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
2241 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
2242 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is now available in Debian
2243 Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.</p>
2244
2245 <p>This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
2246 machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
2247 ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
2248 network or the Internet.  If some background daemon is trying to dial
2249 home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
2250 default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
2251 up.  A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
2252 in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
2253 use the network.</p>
2254
2255 <p>OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
2256 had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
2257 package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
2258 at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
2259 week after the first upload.  It is now team maintained under the Go
2260 language team umbrella.  A few fixes to the default setup is only in
2261 Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.</p>
2262
2263 <p>During testing I ran into an
2264 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813">issue
2265 with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing</a>, which was quickly
2266 resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
2267 change.  I've been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
2268 use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
2269 newer eBPF module that can be used.  The reason is simply that
2270 upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
2271 OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
2272 which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
2273 Debian.  We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
2274 package.  It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
2275 build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
2276 kernel source.</p>
2277
2278 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2279 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2280 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2281
2282       </div>
2283       <div class="tags">
2284
2285
2286         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
2287
2288
2289       </div>
2290     </div>
2291     <div class="padding"></div>
2292
2293     <div class="entry">
2294       <div class="title">
2295         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html">Is the desktop recommending your program for opening its files?</a>
2296       </div>
2297       <div class="date">
2298         29th January 2023
2299       </div>
2300       <div class="body">
2301         <p>Linux desktop systems
2302 <a href="https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html">have
2303 standardized</a> how programs present themselves to the desktop
2304 system.  If a package include a .desktop file in
2305 /usr/share/applications/, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce and the other desktop
2306 environments will pick up the file and use its content to generate the
2307 menu of available programs in the system.  A lesser known fact is that
2308 a package can also explain to the desktop system how to recognize the
2309 files created by the program in question, and use it to open these
2310 files on request, for example via a GUI file browser.</p>
2311
2312 <p>A while back I ran into a package that did not tell the desktop
2313 system how to recognize its files and was not used to open its files
2314 in the file browser and fixed it.  In the process I wrote a simple
2315 debian/tests/ script to ensure the setup keep working.  It might be
2316 useful for other packages too, to ensure any future version of the
2317 package keep handling its own files.</p>
2318
2319 <p>For this to work the file format need a useful MIME type that can
2320 be used to identify the format.  If the file format do not yet have a
2321 MIME type, it should define one and preferably also
2322 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">register
2323 it with IANA</a> to ensure the MIME type string is reserved.</p>
2324
2325 <p>The script uses the <tt>xdg-mime</tt> program from xdg-utils to
2326 query the database of standardized package information and ensure it
2327 return sensible values.  It also need the location of an example file
2328 for xdg-mime to guess the format of.</p>
2329
2330 <pre>
2331 #!/bin/sh
2332 #
2333 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
2334 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice.
2335 #
2336 # Validate the MIME setup, making sure motor types have
2337 # application/vnd.openmotor+yaml associated with them and is connected
2338 # to the openmotor desktop file.
2339
2340 retval=0
2341
2342 mimetype="application/vnd.openmotor+yaml"
2343 testfile="test/data/real/o3100/motor.ric"
2344 mydesktopfile="openmotor.desktop"
2345
2346 filemime="$(xdg-mime query filetype "$testfile")"
2347
2348 if [ "$mimetype" != "$filemime" ] ; then
2349     retval=1
2350     echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file MIME type is $filemine, not $mimetype"
2351 else
2352     echo "success: xdg-mime report correct mime type $mimetype for motor file"
2353 fi
2354
2355 desktop=$(xdg-mime query default "$mimetype")
2356
2357 if [ "$mydesktopfile" != "$desktop" ]; then
2358     retval=1
2359     echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file should be handled by $desktop, not $mydesktopfile"
2360 else
2361     echo "success: xdg-mime agree motor file should be handled by $mydesktopfile"
2362 fi
2363
2364 exit $retval
2365 </pre>
2366
2367 <p>It is a simple way to ensure your users are not very surprised when
2368 they try to open one of your file formats in their file browser.</p>
2369
2370 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2371 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2372 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2373
2374       </div>
2375       <div class="tags">
2376
2377
2378         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2379
2380
2381       </div>
2382     </div>
2383     <div class="padding"></div>
2384
2385     <div class="entry">
2386       <div class="title">
2387         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html">Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive</a>
2388       </div>
2389       <div class="date">
2390         22nd January 2023
2391       </div>
2392       <div class="body">
2393         <p>While reading a
2394 <a href="https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/">blog
2395 post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and
2396 reporting information about them to Apple</a>, even on a machine where
2397 all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a
2398 description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X.  It seemed
2399 like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if
2400 something similar was available for Linux.</p>
2401
2402 <p>It did not take long to find
2403 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch">the OpenSnitch
2404 package</a>, which has been in development since 2017, and now is in
2405 version 1.5.0.  It has had a
2406 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/909567">request for Debian
2407 packaging</a> since 2018, but no-one completed the job so far.  Just
2408 for fun, I decided to see if I could help, and I was very happy to
2409 discover that
2410 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/304">upstream
2411 want a Debian package too</a>.</p>
2412
2413 <p>After struggling a bit with getting the program to run, figuring
2414 out building Go programs (and a little failed detour to look at eBPF
2415 builds too - help needed), I am very happy to report that I am
2416 sponsoring upstream to maintain the package in Debian, and it has
2417 since this morning been waiting in NEW for the ftpmasters to have a
2418 look.  Perhaps it can get into the archive in time for the Bookworm
2419 release?</p>
2420
2421 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2422 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2423 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2424
2425       </div>
2426       <div class="tags">
2427
2428
2429         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
2430
2431
2432       </div>
2433     </div>
2434     <div class="padding"></div>
2435
2436     <div class="entry">
2437       <div class="title">
2438         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html">LinuxCNC MQTT publisher component</a>
2439       </div>
2440       <div class="date">
2441          8th January 2023
2442       </div>
2443       <div class="body">
2444         <p>I watched <a href="https://yewtu.be/watch?v=jmKUV3aNLjk">a 2015
2445 video from Andreas Schiffler</a> the other day, where he set up
2446 <a href="https://linuxcnc.org/">LinuxCNC</a> to send status
2447 information to the MQTT broker IBM Bluemix.  As I also use MQTT for
2448 graphing, it occured to me that a generic MQTT LinuxCNC component
2449 would be useful and I set out to implement it.  Today I got the first
2450 draft limping along and submitted as
2451 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/2253">a patch to the
2452 LinuxCNC project</a>.</p>
2453
2454 <p>The simple part was setting up the MQTT publishing code in Python.
2455 I already have set up other parts submitting data to my Mosquito MQTT
2456 broker, so I could reuse that code.  Writing a LinuxCNC component in
2457 Python as new to me, but using existing examples in the code
2458 repository and the extensive documentation, this was fairly straight
2459 forward.  The hardest part was creating a automated test for the
2460 component to ensure it was working.  Testing it in a simulated
2461 LinuxCNC machine proved very useful, as I discovered features I needed
2462 that I had not thought of yet, and adjusted the code quite a bit to
2463 make it easier to test without a operational MQTT broker
2464 available.</p>
2465
2466 <p>The draft is ready and working, but I am unsure which LinuxCNC HAL
2467 pins I should collect and publish by default (in other words, the
2468 default set of information pieces published), and how to get the
2469 machine name from the LinuxCNC INI file.  The latter is a minor
2470 detail, but I expect it would be useful in a setup with several
2471 machines available.  I am hoping for feedback from the experienced
2472 LinuxCNC developers and users, to make the component even better
2473 before it can go into the mainland LinuxCNC code base.</p>
2474
2475 <p>Since I started on the MQTT component, I came across
2476 <a href="https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Bqa2grG0XtA">another video from Kent
2477 VanderVelden</a> where he combine LinuxCNC with a set of screen glasses
2478 controlled by a Raspberry Pi, and it occured to me that it would
2479 be useful for such use cases if LinuxCNC also provided a REST API for
2480 querying its status.  I hope to start on such component once the MQTT
2481 component is working well.</p>
2482
2483 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2484 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2485 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2486
2487       </div>
2488       <div class="tags">
2489
2490
2491         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2492
2493
2494       </div>
2495     </div>
2496     <div class="padding"></div>
2497
2498     <div class="entry">
2499       <div class="title">
2500         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/ONVIF_IP_camera_management_tool_finally_in_Debian.html">ONVIF IP camera management tool finally in Debian</a>
2501       </div>
2502       <div class="date">
2503         24th December 2022
2504       </div>
2505       <div class="body">
2506         <p>Merry Christmas to you all.  Here is a small gift to all those with
2507 IP cameras following the <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">ONVIF
2508 specification</a>.  There is finally a nice command line and GUI tool
2509 in Debian to manage ONVIF IP cameras.  After working with upstream for
2510 a few months and sponsoring the upload, I am very happy to report that
2511 the <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/libonvif">libonvif package</a>
2512 entered Debian Sid last night.</p>
2513
2514 <p>The package provide a C library to communicate with such cameras, a
2515 command line tool to locate and update settings of (like password) the
2516 cameras and a GUI tool to configure and control the units as well as
2517 preview the video from the camera.  Libonvif is available on Both
2518 Linux and Windows and the GUI tool uses the Qt library.  The main
2519 competitors are non-free software, while libonvif is GNU GPL licensed.
2520 I am very glad Debian users in the future can control their cameras
2521 using a free software system provided by Debian.  But the ONVIF world
2522 is full of slightly broken firmware, where the cameras pretend to
2523 follow the ONVIF specification but fail to set some configuration
2524 values or refuse to provide video to more than one recipient at the
2525 time, and the onvif project is quite young and might take a while
2526 before it completely work with your camera.  Upstream seem eager to
2527 improve the library, so handling any broken camera might be just <a
2528 href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">a bug report away</a>.</p>
2529
2530 <p>The package just cleared NEW, and need a new source only upload
2531 before it can enter testing.  This will happen in the next few
2532 days.</p>
2533
2534 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2535 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2536 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2537
2538       </div>
2539       <div class="tags">
2540
2541
2542         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2543
2544
2545       </div>
2546     </div>
2547     <div class="padding"></div>
2548
2549     <div class="entry">
2550       <div class="title">
2551         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html">Managing and using ONVIF IP cameras with Linux</a>
2552       </div>
2553       <div class="date">
2554         19th October 2022
2555       </div>
2556       <div class="body">
2557         <p>Recently I have been looking at how to control and collect data
2558 from a handful IP cameras using Linux.  I both wanted to change their
2559 settings and to make their imagery available via a free software
2560 service under my control.  Here is a summary of the tools I found.</p>
2561
2562 <p>First I had to identify the cameras and their protocols.  As far as
2563 I could tell, they were using some SOAP looking protocol and their
2564 internal web server seem to only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer
2565 with some proprietary binary plugin, which in these days of course is
2566 a security disaster and also made it impossible for me to use the
2567 camera web interface.  Luckily I discovered that the SOAP looking
2568 protocol is actually following <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">the
2569 ONVIF specification</a>, which seem to be supported by a lot of IP
2570 cameras these days.</p>
2571
2572 <p>Once the protocol was identified, I was able to find what appear to
2573 be the most popular way to configure ONVIF cameras, the free software
2574 Windows tool named
2575 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/">ONVIF Device
2576 Manager</a>.  Lacking any other options at the time, I tried
2577 unsuccessfully to get it running using Wine, but was missing a dotnet
2578 40 library and I found no way around it to run it on Linux.</p>
2579
2580 <p>The next tool I found to configure the cameras were a non-free Linux Qt
2581 client <a href="https://www.lingodigit.com/onvif_nvcdemo.html">ONVIF
2582 Device Tool</a>.  I did not like its terms of use, so did not spend
2583 much time on it.</p>
2584
2585 <p>To collect the video and make it available in a web interface, I
2586 found the Zoneminder tool in Debian.  A recent version was able to
2587 automatically detect and configure ONVIF devices, so I could use it to
2588 set up motion detection in and collection of the camera output.  I had
2589 initial problems getting the ONVIF autodetection to work, as both
2590 Firefox and Chromium <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1001188">refused
2591 the inter-tab communication</a> being used by the Zoneminder web
2592 pages, but managed to get konqueror to work.  Apparently the "Enhanced
2593 Tracking Protection" in Firefox cause the problem.  I ended up
2594 upgrading to the Bookworm edition of Zoneminder in the process to try
2595 to fix the issue, and believe the problem might be solved now.</p>
2596
2597 <p>In the process I came across the nice Linux GUI tool
2598 <a href="https://gitlab.com/caspermeijn/onvifviewer/">ONVIF Viewer</a>
2599 allowing me to preview the camera output and validate the login
2600 passwords required.  Sadly its author has grown tired of maintaining
2601 the software, so it might not see any future updates.  Which is sad,
2602 as the viewer is sightly unstable and the picture tend to lock up.
2603 Note, this lockup might be due to limitations in the cameras and not
2604 the viewer implementation.  I suspect the camera is only able to
2605 provide pictures to one client at the time, and the Zoneminder feed
2606 might interfere with the GUI viewer.  I have
2607 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1000820">asked for the tool to be
2608 included in Debian</a>.</p>
2609
2610 <p>Finally, I found what appear to be very nice Linux free software
2611 replacement for the Windows tool, named
2612 <a href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">libonvif</a>.  It
2613 provide a C library to talk to ONVIF devices as well as a command line
2614 and GUI tool using the library.  Using the GUI tool I was able to change
2615 the admin passwords and update other settings of the cameras.  I have
2616 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1021980">asked for the package to be
2617 included in Debian</a>.</p>
2618
2619 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2620 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2621 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2622
2623 <p><strong>Update 2022-10-20</strong>: Since my initial publication of
2624 this text, I got several suggestions for more free software Linux
2625 tools.  There is <a href="https://github.com/quatanium/python-onvif">a
2626 ONVIF python library</a> (already
2627 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/824240">requested into Debian</a>) and
2628 <a href="https://github.com/FalkTannhaeuser/python-onvif-zeep">a python 3
2629 fork</a> using a different SOAP dependency.  There is also
2630 <a href="https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/onvif/">support for
2631 ONVIF in Home Assistant</a>, and there is an alternative to Zoneminder
2632 called <a href="https://www.shinobi.video/">Shinobi</a>.  The latter
2633 two are not included in Debian either.  I have not tested any of these
2634 so far.</p>
2635
2636       </div>
2637       <div class="tags">
2638
2639
2640         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2641
2642
2643       </div>
2644     </div>
2645     <div class="padding"></div>
2646
2647     <div class="entry">
2648       <div class="title">
2649         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Time to translate the Bullseye edition of the Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2650       </div>
2651       <div class="date">
2652         12th September 2022
2653       </div>
2654       <div class="body">
2655         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
2656
2657 <p>(The picture is of the previous edition.)</p>
2658
2659 <p>Almost two years after the previous Norwegian Bokmål translation of
2660 the "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
2661 Handbook</a>" was published, a new edition is finally being prepared.  The
2662 english text is updated, and it is time to start working on the
2663 translations.  Around 37 percent of the strings have been updated, one
2664 way or another, and the translations starting from a complete Debian Buster
2665 edition now need to bring their translation up from 63% to 100%.  The
2666 complete book is licensed using a Creative Commons license, and has
2667 been published in several languages over the years.  The translations
2668 are done by volunteers to bring Linux in their native tongue.  The
2669 last time I checked, it complete text was available in English,
2670 Norwegian Bokmål, German, Indonesian, Brazil Portuguese and Spanish.
2671 In addition, work has been started for Arabic (Morocco), Catalan,
2672 Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish,
2673 Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish,
2674 Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.</p>
2675
2676 <p>The translation is conducted on
2677 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2678 hosted weblate project page</a>.  Prospective translators are
2679 recommeded to subscribe to
2680 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2681 translators mailing list</a> and should also check out
2682 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2683 contributors</a>.</p>
2684
2685 <p>I am one of the Norwegian Bokmål translators of this book, and we
2686 have just started.  Your contribution is most welcome.</p>
2687
2688 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2689 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2690 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2691
2692       </div>
2693       <div class="tags">
2694
2695
2696         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2697
2698
2699       </div>
2700     </div>
2701     <div class="padding"></div>
2702
2703     <div class="entry">
2704       <div class="title">
2705         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_LinuxCNC_servo_PID_tuning_.html">Automatic LinuxCNC servo PID tuning?</a>
2706       </div>
2707       <div class="date">
2708         16th July 2022
2709       </div>
2710       <div class="body">
2711         <p>While working on a CNC with servo motors controlled by the
2712 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a>
2713 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller">PID
2714 controller</a>, I recently had to learn how to tune the collection of values
2715 that control such mathematical machinery that a PID controller is.  It
2716 proved to be a lot harder than I hoped, and I still have not succeeded
2717 in getting the Z PID controller to successfully defy gravity, nor X
2718 and Y to move accurately and reliably.  But while climbing up this
2719 rather steep learning curve, I discovered that some motor control
2720 systems are able to tune their PID controllers.  I got the impression
2721 from the documentation that LinuxCNC were not.  This proved to be not
2722 true.</p>
2723
2724 <p>The LinuxCNC
2725 <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/pid.9.html">pid
2726 component</a> is the recommended PID controller to use.  It uses eight
2727 constants <tt>Pgain</tt>, <tt>Igain</tt>, <tt>Dgain</tt>,
2728 <tt>bias</tt>, <tt>FF0</tt>, <tt>FF1</tt>, <tt>FF2</tt> and
2729 <tt>FF3</tt> to calculate the output value based on current and wanted
2730 state, and all of these need to have a sensible value for the
2731 controller to behave properly.  Note, there are even more values
2732 involved, theser are just the most important ones.  In my case I need
2733 the X, Y and Z axes to follow the requested path with little error.
2734 This has proved quite a challenge for someone who have never tuned a
2735 PID controller before, but there is at least some help to be found.
2736
2737 <p>I discovered that included in LinuxCNC was this old PID component
2738 at_pid claiming to have auto tuning capabilities.  Sadly it had been
2739 neglected since 2011, and could not be used as a plug in replacement
2740 for the default pid component.  One would have to rewriting the
2741 LinuxCNC HAL setup to test at_pid.  This was rather sad, when I wanted
2742 to quickly test auto tuning to see if it did a better job than me at
2743 figuring out good P, I and D values to use.</p>
2744
2745 <p>I decided to have a look if the situation could be improved.  This
2746 involved trying to understand the code and history of the pid and
2747 at_pid components.  Apparently they had a common ancestor, as code
2748 structure, comments and variable names were quite close to each other.
2749 Sadly this was not reflected in the git history, making it hard to
2750 figure out what really happened.  My guess is that the author of
2751 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/at_pid.c">at_pid.c</a>
2752 took a version of
2753 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/pid.c">pid.c</a>,
2754 rewrote it to follow the structure he wished pid.c to have, then added
2755 support for auto tuning and finally got it included into the LinuxCNC
2756 repository.  The restructuring and lack of early history made it
2757 harder to figure out which part of the code were relevant to the auto
2758 tuning, and which part of the code needed to be updated to work the
2759 same way as the current pid.c implementation.  I started by trying to
2760 isolate relevant changes in pid.c, and applying them to at_pid.c.  My
2761 aim was to make sure the at_pid component could replace the pid
2762 component with a simple change in the HAL setup loadrt line, without
2763 having to "rewire" the rest of the HAL configuration.  After a few
2764 hours following this approach, I had learned quite a lot about the
2765 code structure of both components, while concluding I was heading down
2766 the wrong rabbit hole, and should get back to the surface and find a
2767 different path.</p>
2768
2769 <p>For the second attempt, I decided to throw away all the PID control
2770 related part of the original at_pid.c, and instead isolate and lift
2771 the auto tuning part of the code and inject it into a copy of pid.c.
2772 This ensured compatibility with the current pid component, while
2773 adding auto tuning as a run time option.  To make it easier to identify
2774 the relevant parts in the future, I wrapped all the auto tuning code
2775 with '#ifdef AUTO_TUNER'.  The end result behave just like the current
2776 pid component by default, as that part of the code is identical.  The
2777 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/1820">end result
2778 entered the LinuxCNC master branch</a> a few days ago.</p>
2779
2780 <p>To enable auto tuning, one need to set a few HAL pins in the PID
2781 component.  The most important ones are <tt>tune-effort</tt>,
2782 <tt>tune-mode</tt> and <tt>tune-start</tt>.  But lets take a step
2783 back, and see what the auto tuning code will do.  I do not know the
2784 mathematical foundation of the at_pid algorithm, but from observation
2785 I can tell that the algorithm will, when enabled, produce a square
2786 wave pattern centered around the <tt>bias</tt> value on the output pin
2787 of the PID controller.  This can be seen using the HAL Scope provided
2788 by LinuxCNC.  In my case, this is translated into voltage (+-10V) sent
2789 to the motor controller, which in turn is translated into motor speed.
2790 So at_pid will ask the motor to move the axis back and forth.  The
2791 number of cycles in the pattern is controlled by the
2792 <tt>tune-cycles</tt> pin, and the extremes of the wave pattern is
2793 controlled by the <tt>tune-effort</tt> pin.  Of course, trying to
2794 change the direction of a physical object instantly (as in going
2795 directly from a positive voltage to the equivalent negative voltage)
2796 do not change velocity instantly, and it take some time for the object
2797 to slow down and move in the opposite direction.  This result in a
2798 more smooth movement wave form, as the axis in question were vibrating
2799 back and forth.  When the axis reached the target speed in the
2800 opposing direction, the auto tuner change direction again.  After
2801 several of these changes, the average time delay between the 'peaks'
2802 and 'valleys' of this movement graph is then used to calculate
2803 proposed values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain, and insert them into the
2804 HAL model to use by the pid controller.  The auto tuned settings are
2805 not great, but htye work a lot better than the values I had been able
2806 to cook up on my own, at least for the horizontal X and Y axis.  But I
2807 had to use very small <tt>tune-effort<tt> values, as my motor
2808 controllers error out if the voltage change too quickly.  I've been
2809 less lucky with the Z axis, which is moving a heavy object up and
2810 down, and seem to confuse the algorithm.  The Z axis movement became a
2811 lot better when I introduced a <tt>bias</tt> value to counter the
2812 gravitational drag, but I will have to work a lot more on the Z axis
2813 PID values.</p>
2814
2815 <p>Armed with this knowledge, it is time to look at how to do the
2816 tuning.  Lets say the HAL configuration in question load the PID
2817 component for X, Y and Z like this:</p>
2818
2819 <blockquote><pre>
2820 loadrt pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
2821 </pre></blockquote>
2822
2823 <p>Armed with the new and improved at_pid component, the new line will
2824 look like this:</p>
2825
2826 <blockquote><pre>
2827 loadrt at_pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
2828 </pre></blockquote>
2829
2830 <p>The rest of the HAL setup can stay the same.  This work because the
2831 components are referenced by name.  If the component had used count=3
2832 instead, all use of pid.# had to be changed to at_pid.#.</p>
2833
2834 <p>To start tuning the X axis, move the axis to the middle of its
2835 range, to make sure it do not hit anything when it start moving back
2836 and forth.  Next, set the <tt>tune-effort</tt> to a low number in the
2837 output range.  I used 0.1 as my initial value.  Next, assign 1 to the
2838 <tt>tune-mode</tt> value. Note, this will disable the pid controlling
2839 part and feed 0 to the output pin, which in my case initially caused a
2840 lot of drift.  In my case it proved to be a good idea with X and Y to
2841 tune the motor driver to make sure 0 voltage stopped the motor
2842 rotation.  On the other hand, for the Z axis this proved to be a bad
2843 idea, so it will depend on your setup.  It might help to set the
2844 <tt>bias</tt> value to a output value that reduce or eliminate the
2845 axis drift.  Finally, after setting <tt>tune-mode</tt>, set
2846 <tt>tune-start</tt> to 1 to activate the auto tuning.  If all go well,
2847 your axis will vibrate for a few seconds and when it is done, new
2848 values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain will be active.  To test them,
2849 change <tt>tune-mode</tt> back to 0.  Note that this might cause the
2850 machine to suddenly jerk as it bring the axis back to its commanded
2851 position, which it might have drifted away from during tuning.  To
2852 summarize with some halcmd lines:</p>
2853
2854 <blockquote><pre>
2855 setp pid.x.tune-effort 0.1
2856 setp pid.x.tune-mode 1
2857 setp pid.x.tune-start 1
2858 # wait for the tuning to complete
2859 setp pid.x.tune-mode 0
2860 </pre></blockquote>
2861
2862 <p>After doing this task quite a few times while trying to figure out
2863 how to properly tune the PID controllers on the machine in, I decided
2864 to figure out if this process could be automated, and wrote a script
2865 to do the entire tuning process from power on.  The end result will
2866 ensure the machine is powered on and ready to run, home all axis if it
2867 is not already done, check that the extra tuning pins are available,
2868 move the axis to its mid point, run the auto tuning and re-enable the
2869 pid controller when it is done.  It can be run several times.  Check
2870 out the
2871 <a href="https://github.com/SebKuzminsky/MazakVQC1540/blob/bon-dev/scripts/run-auto-pid-tuner">run-auto-pid-tuner</a>
2872 script on github if you want to learn how it is done.</p>
2873
2874 <p>My hope is that this little adventure can inspire someone who know
2875 more about motor PID controller tuning can implement even better
2876 algorithms for automatic PID tuning in LinuxCNC, making life easier
2877 for both me and all the others that want to use LinuxCNC but lack the
2878 in depth knowledge needed to tune PID controllers well.</p>
2879
2880 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2881 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2882 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2883
2884       </div>
2885       <div class="tags">
2886
2887
2888         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2889
2890
2891       </div>
2892     </div>
2893     <div class="padding"></div>
2894
2895     <div class="entry">
2896       <div class="title">
2897         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_translators_life_just_got_a_bit_easier.html">LinuxCNC translators life just got a bit easier</a>
2898       </div>
2899       <div class="date">
2900          3rd June 2022
2901       </div>
2902       <div class="body">
2903         <p>Back in oktober last year, when I started looking at the
2904 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a> system, I
2905 proposed to change the documentation build system make life easier for
2906 translators.  The original system consisted of independently written
2907 documentation files for each language, with no automated way to track
2908 changes done in other translations and no help for the translators to
2909 know how much was left to translated.  By using
2910 <a href="https://po4a.org/">the po4a system</a> to generate POT and PO
2911 files from the English documentation, this can be improved.  A small
2912 team of LinuxCNC contributors got together and today our labour
2913 finally payed off.  Since a few hours ago, it is now possible to
2914 translate <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/linuxcnc/">the
2915 LinuxCNC documentation on Weblate</a>, alongside the program itself.</p>
2916
2917 <p>The effort to migrate the documentation to use po4a has been both
2918 slow and frustrating.  I am very happy we finally made it.</p>
2919
2920 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2921 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2922 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2923
2924       </div>
2925       <div class="tags">
2926
2927
2928         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2929
2930
2931       </div>
2932     </div>
2933     <div class="padding"></div>
2934
2935     <div class="entry">
2936       <div class="title">
2937         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html">geteltorito make CD firmware upgrades a breeze</a>
2938       </div>
2939       <div class="date">
2940         20th April 2022
2941       </div>
2942       <div class="body">
2943         <p>Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and
2944 located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do
2945 not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal
2946 information that I would like).  The
2947 <a href="https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/search?query=thinkpad firmware bios upgrade iso&SearchType=Customer search&searchLocation=Masthead">download
2948 from Lenovo</a> is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem
2949 when all I got available is a USB memory stick.  I tried booting the
2950 ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work.  But genisoimage came to
2951 the rescue.</p>
2952
2953 <P>The geteltorito program in
2954 <a href="http://tracker.debian.org/cdrkit">the genisoimage binary
2955 package</a> is able to convert the bootable ISO image to a bootable
2956 USB stick using a simple command line recipe, which I then can write
2957 to the most recently inserted USB stick:</p>
2958
2959 <blockquote><pre>
2960 geteltorito -o usbstick.img lenovo-firmware.iso
2961 sudo dd bs=10M if=usbstick.img of=$(ls -tr /dev/sd?|tail -1)
2962 </pre></blockquote>
2963
2964 <p>This USB stick booted the firmware upgrader just fine, and in a few
2965 minutes my machine had the latest and greatest BIOS firmware in place.</p>
2966
2967       </div>
2968       <div class="tags">
2969
2970
2971         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2972
2973
2974       </div>
2975     </div>
2976     <div class="padding"></div>
2977
2978     <div class="entry">
2979       <div class="title">
2980         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html">Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?</a>
2981       </div>
2982       <div class="date">
2983          2nd March 2022
2984       </div>
2985       <div class="body">
2986         <p>After many months of hard work by the good people involved in
2987 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a>, the
2988 system was accepted Sunday
2989 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linuxcnc">into Debian</a>.
2990 Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from
2991 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=linuxcnc">its
2992 popularity-contest numbers</a> that people have been reporting its use
2993 since 2012.  <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/">Its project site</a> might
2994 be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting
2995 via Tor.</p>
2996
2997 <p>But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering?  Perhaps a
2998 Wikipedia quote is in place?</p>
2999
3000 <blockquote>
3001 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
3002 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
3003 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
3004 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
3005 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
3006 interactive development)."
3007 </blockquote>
3008
3009 <p>It can even control 3D printers.  And even though the Wikipedia
3010 page indicate that it can only work with hard real time kernel
3011 features, it can also work with the user space soft real time features
3012 provided by the Debian kernel.
3013 <a href="https://github.com/linuxcnc/linuxcnc">The source code</a> is
3014 available from Github.  The last few months I've been involved in the
3015 translation setup for the program and documentation.  Translators are
3016 most welcome to
3017 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/linuxcnc/">join the
3018 effort</a> using Weblate.</p>
3019
3020 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3021 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3022 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3023
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="tags">
3026
3027
3028         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3029
3030
3031       </div>
3032     </div>
3033     <div class="padding"></div>
3034
3035     <div class="entry">
3036       <div class="title">
3037         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_still_an_excellent_choice_for_Lego_builders.html">Debian still an excellent choice for Lego builders</a>
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="date">
3040         24th October 2021
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="body">
3043         <p>The Debian Lego team saw a lot of activity the last few weeks.  All
3044 the packages under the team umbrella has been updated to fix
3045 packaging, lintian issues and BTS reports.  In addition, a new and
3046 inspiring team member appeared on both the
3047 <a href="https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-lego-team">debian-lego-team
3048 Team mailing list</a> and
3049 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC channel
3050 #debian-lego</a>.  If you are interested in Lego CAD design and LEGO
3051 Mindstorms programming, check out the
3052 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">team wiki page</a> to
3053 see what Debian can offer the Lego enthusiast.</p>
3054
3055 <p>Patches has been sent upstream, causing new upstream releases, one
3056 even the first one in more than ten years, and old upstreams was
3057 released with new ones.  There are still a lot of work left, and the
3058 team welcome more members to help us make sure Debian is the Linux
3059 distribution of choice for Lego builders.  If you want to contribute,
3060 join us in the IRC channel and become part of
3061 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/debian-lego-team/">the team on
3062 Salsa</a>.</p>
3063
3064 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3065 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3066 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3067
3068       </div>
3069       <div class="tags">
3070
3071
3072         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3073
3074
3075       </div>
3076     </div>
3077     <div class="padding"></div>
3078
3079     <div class="entry">
3080       <div class="title">
3081         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html">Six complete translations of The Debian Administrator's Handbook for Buster</a>
3082       </div>
3083       <div class="date">
3084          5th July 2021
3085       </div>
3086       <div class="body">
3087         <p>I am happy observe that the <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The
3088 Debian Administrator's Handbook</a> is available in six languages now.
3089 I am not sure which one of these are completely proof read, but the
3090 complete book is available in these languages:
3091
3092 <ul>
3093
3094 <li>English</li>
3095 <li>Norwegian Bokmål</li>
3096 <li>German</li>
3097 <li>Indonesian</li>
3098 <li>Brazil Portuguese</li>
3099 <li>Spanish</li>
3100
3101 </ul>
3102
3103 <p>This is the list of languages more than 70% complete, in other
3104 words with not too much left to do:</p>
3105
3106 <ul>
3107
3108 <li>Chinese (Simplified) - 90%</li>
3109 <li>French - 79%</li>
3110 <li>Italian - 79%</li>
3111 <li>Japanese - 77%</li>
3112 <li>Arabic (Morocco) - 75%</li>
3113 <li>Persian - 71%</li>
3114
3115 </ul>
3116
3117 <p>I wonder how long it will take to bring these to 100%.</p>
3118
3119 <p>Then there is the list of languages about halfway done:</p>
3120
3121 <ul>
3122
3123 <li>Russian - 63%</li>
3124 <li>Swedish - 53%</li>
3125 <li>Chinese (Traditional) - 46%</li>
3126 <li>Catalan - 45%</li>
3127
3128 </ul>
3129
3130 <p>Several are on to a good start:</p>
3131
3132 <ul>
3133
3134 <li>Dutch - 26%</li>
3135 <li>Vietnamese - 25%</li>
3136 <li>Polish - 23%</li>
3137 <li>Czech - 22%</li>
3138 <li>Turkish - 18%</li>
3139
3140 </ul>
3141
3142 <p>Finally, there are the ones just getting started:</p>
3143
3144 <ul>
3145
3146 <li>Korean - 4%</li>
3147 <li>Croatian - 2%</li>
3148 <li>Greek - 2%</li>
3149 <li>Danish - 1%</li>
3150 <li>Romanian - 1%</li>
3151
3152 </ul>
3153
3154 <p>If you want to help provide a Debian instruction book in your own
3155 language, visit
3156 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/#languages">Weblate</a>
3157 to contribute to the translations.</p>
3158
3159 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3160 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3161 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3162
3163       </div>
3164       <div class="tags">
3165
3166
3167         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3168
3169
3170       </div>
3171     </div>
3172     <div class="padding"></div>
3173
3174     <div class="entry">
3175       <div class="title">
3176         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Latest_Jami_back_in_Debian_Testing__and_scriptable_using_dbus.html">Latest Jami back in Debian Testing, and scriptable using dbus</a>
3177       </div>
3178       <div class="date">
3179         12th January 2021
3180       </div>
3181       <div class="body">
3182         <p>After a lot of hard work by its maintainer Alexandre Viau and
3183 others, the decentralized communication platform
3184 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>
3185 (earlier known as Ring), managed to get
3186 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">its latest version</a>
3187 into Debian Testing.  Several of its dependencies has caused build and
3188 propagation problems, which all seem to be solved now.</p>
3189
3190 <p>In addition to the fact that Jami is decentralized, similar to how
3191 bittorrent is decentralized, I first of all like how it is not
3192 connected to external IDs like phone numbers.  This allow me to set up
3193 computers to send me notifications using Jami without having to find
3194 get a phone number for each computer.  Automatic notification via Jami
3195 is also made trivial thanks to the provided client side API (as a DBus
3196 service).  Here is my bourne shell script demonstrating how to let any
3197 system send a message to any Jami address.  It will create a new
3198 identity before sending the message, if no Jami identity exist
3199 already:</p>
3200
3201 <p><pre>
3202 #!/bin/sh
3203 #
3204 # Usage: $0 <jami-address> <message>
3205 #
3206 # Send <message> to <jami-address>, create local jami account if
3207 # missing.
3208 #
3209 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice
3210 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
3211
3212
3213 if [ -z "$HOME" ] ; then
3214     echo "error: missing \$HOME, required for dbus to work"
3215     exit 1
3216 fi
3217
3218 # First, get dbus running if not already running
3219 DBUSLAUNCH=/usr/bin/dbus-launch
3220 PIDFILE=/run/asterisk/dbus-session.pid
3221 if [ -e $PIDFILE ] ; then
3222     . $PIDFILE
3223     if ! kill -0 $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID 2>/dev/null ; then
3224         unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
3225     fi
3226 fi
3227 if [ -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ] && [ -x "$DBUSLAUNCH" ]; then
3228     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=$HOME/.dbus"
3229     dbus-daemon --session --address="$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" --nofork --nopidfile --syslog-only < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 3>&1 &
3230     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$!
3231     (
3232         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
3233         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=\""$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"\"
3234         echo export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
3235     ) > $PIDFILE
3236     . $PIDFILE
3237 fi &
3238
3239 dringop() {
3240     part="$1"; shift
3241     op="$1"; shift
3242     dbus-send --session \
3243         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
3244 }
3245
3246 dringopreply() {
3247     part="$1"; shift
3248     op="$1"; shift
3249     dbus-send --session --print-reply \
3250         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
3251 }
3252
3253 firstaccount() {
3254     dringopreply ConfigurationManager getAccountList | \
3255       grep string | awk -F'"' '{print $2}' | head -n 1
3256 }
3257
3258 account=$(firstaccount)
3259
3260 if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
3261     echo "Missing local account, trying to create it"
3262     dringop ConfigurationManager addAccount \
3263       dict:string:string:"Account.type","RING","Account.videoEnabled","false"
3264     account=$(firstaccount)
3265     if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
3266         echo "unable to create local account"
3267         exit 1
3268     fi
3269 fi
3270
3271 # Not using dringopreply to ensure $2 can contain spaces
3272 dbus-send --print-reply --session \
3273   --dest=cx.ring.Ring \
3274   /cx/ring/Ring/ConfigurationManager \
3275   cx.ring.Ring.ConfigurationManager.sendTextMessage \
3276   string:"$account" string:"$1" \
3277   dict:string:string:"text/plain","$2"
3278 </pre></p>
3279
3280 <p>If you want to check it out yourself, visit the
3281 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system project page</a> to learn
3282 more, and install the latest Jami client from Debian Unstable or
3283 Testing.</p>
3284
3285 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3286 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3287 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3288
3289       </div>
3290       <div class="tags">
3291
3292
3293         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3294
3295
3296       </div>
3297     </div>
3298     <div class="padding"></div>
3299
3300     <div class="entry">
3301       <div class="title">
3302         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
3303       </div>
3304       <div class="date">
3305         20th October 2020
3306       </div>
3307       <div class="body">
3308         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
3309
3310 <p>I am happy to report that we finally made it!  Norwegian Bokmål
3311 became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
3312 based edition of "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
3313 Administrator's Handbook</a>".  The print proof reading copy arrived
3314 some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
3315 general distribution.  This updated paperback edition <a
3316 href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available from
3317 lulu.com</a>.  The book is also available for download in electronic
3318 form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
3319 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online</a>.</p>
3320
3321 <p>I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
3322 which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
3323 number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
3324 really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
3325 knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem.  The book will be
3326 available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &
3327 Noble soon, but I recommend buying
3328 "<a href="https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/roland-mas-and-rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-9j7qwq.html">Håndbok
3329 for Debian-administratoren</a>" directly from the source at Lulu.
3330
3331 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3332 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3333 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3334
3335       </div>
3336       <div class="tags">
3337
3338
3339         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3340
3341
3342       </div>
3343     </div>
3344     <div class="padding"></div>
3345
3346     <div class="entry">
3347       <div class="title">
3348         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html">Buster update of Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook almost done</a>
3349       </div>
3350       <div class="date">
3351         11th September 2020
3352       </div>
3353       <div class="body">
3354         <p>Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
3355 of the Norwegian translation for
3356 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
3357 Handbook</a>" is now almost completed.  After many months of proof
3358 reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
3359 to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
3360 and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com.  While it is
3361 still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
3362 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
3363 hosted Weblate service</a>, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
3364 <a href=" https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">the Buster
3365 edition on the web</a> until the print edition is ready.</p>
3366
3367 <p>The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
3368 with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
3369 I hope a lot of readers find it useful.</p>
3370
3371 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3372 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3373 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3374
3375       </div>
3376       <div class="tags">
3377
3378
3379         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3380
3381
3382       </div>
3383     </div>
3384     <div class="padding"></div>
3385
3386     <div class="entry">
3387       <div class="title">
3388         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
3389       </div>
3390       <div class="date">
3391          4th July 2020
3392       </div>
3393       <div class="body">
3394         <p>Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
3395 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
3396 Handbook</a>" was published.  This was based on Debian Jessie.  Now a
3397 new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready.  Work on the
3398 updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
3399 now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
3400 texts being translated.  A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
3401 but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.</p>
3402
3403 <p>The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
3404 help with the proof reading.  The translation uses
3405 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
3406 hosted Weblate service</a>, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
3407 submit improvements and suggestions.  There is also a proof readers
3408 PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
3409 way.</p>
3410
3411 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3412 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3413 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3414
3415       </div>
3416       <div class="tags">
3417
3418
3419         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3420
3421
3422       </div>
3423     </div>
3424     <div class="padding"></div>
3425
3426     <div class="entry">
3427       <div class="title">
3428         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html">Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</a>
3429       </div>
3430       <div class="date">
3431          6th June 2020
3432       </div>
3433       <div class="body">
3434         <p>As a member of the <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix
3435 User Group</a>, I have the pleasure of receiving the
3436 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a> magazine
3437 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/">;login:</a>
3438 several times a year.  I rarely have time to read all the articles,
3439 but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
3440 knowledge passed on there.  I even carry the latest issue with me most
3441 of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
3442 spare minutes.</p>
3443
3444 <p>The other day I came across a nice article titled
3445 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill">The
3446 Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service</a>" with a
3447 marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
3448 The idea is as simple as it is powerful.  By introducing a new
3449 socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
3450 handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
3451 support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
3452 system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
3453 systems used.  Instead of doing this:</p>
3454
3455 <p><blockquote><pre>
3456 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
3457 </pre></blockquote></p>
3458
3459 <p>the program code would be doing this:<p>
3460
3461 <p><blockquote><pre>
3462 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
3463 </pre></blockquote></p>
3464
3465 <p>According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
3466 would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
3467 when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.</p>
3468
3469 <p>The project has set up the
3470 <a href="https://securesocketapi.org/">https://securesocketapi.org/</a>
3471 web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
3472 associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
3473 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa">ssa</a> and
3474 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon">ssa-daemon</a>.
3475 Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
3476 so its copyright status is unclear.  A
3477 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2">request to solve
3478 this</a> about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.</p>
3479
3480 <p>I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
3481 understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
3482 and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
3483 would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
3484 up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
3485 wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
3486 library.</p>
3487
3488 <p>I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
3489 secure network connections. :)</p>
3490
3491 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3492 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3493 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3494
3495       </div>
3496       <div class="tags">
3497
3498
3499         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
3500
3501
3502       </div>
3503     </div>
3504     <div class="padding"></div>
3505
3506     <div class="entry">
3507       <div class="title">
3508         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html">Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</a>
3509       </div>
3510       <div class="date">
3511          8th May 2020
3512       </div>
3513       <div class="body">
3514         <p>Half a year ago,
3515 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">I
3516 wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami communication
3517 client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
3518 handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
3519 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
3520 other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
3521 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
3522 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
3523 conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
3524 software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms">copyright
3525 license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
3526 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
3527 Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
3528
3529 <p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
3530 password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
3531 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
3532 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
3533 is not great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
3534 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
3535 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
3536 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
3537 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
3538 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
3539 Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
3540 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
3541 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
3542 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
3543 connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
3544 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
3545 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
3546 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
3547 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
3548 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
3549
3550 <p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
3551 trick is already
3552 <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip">documented
3553 from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
3554 password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
3555 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
3556 connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
3557 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
3558 of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
3559 room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is "<tt>[Meeting
3560 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]</tt>", and you can here see how you
3561 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
3562 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
3563 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
3564 then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>
3565
3566 <p><blockquote>
3567 <tt>sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170</tt>
3568 </blockquote></p>
3569
3570 <p>Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
3571 recommend this setup to others. :)</p>
3572
3573 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3574 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3575 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3576
3577       </div>
3578       <div class="tags">
3579
3580
3581         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3582
3583
3584       </div>
3585     </div>
3586     <div class="padding"></div>
3587
3588     <div class="entry">
3589       <div class="title">
3590         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html">GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</a>
3591       </div>
3592       <div class="date">
3593         29th April 2020
3594       </div>
3595       <div class="body">
3596         <p>The curiosity got the better of me when
3597 <a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
3598 reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
3599 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
3600 and a few days later it was reported that
3601 <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
3602 tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
3603
3604 <p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
3605 learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
3606 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
3607 already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
3608 Debian</a>.  It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
3609 transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
3610 Studio to build binaries.</p>
3611
3612 <p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
3613 quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
3614 taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced.  A
3615 new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
3616
3617 <p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
3618 introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs.  It was fun to
3619 learn a new programming language.  If you want to test for yourself,
3620 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
3621 page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
3622
3623 <p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
3624 standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
3625 test suite, which sound good to me.  It is nice to know it is possible
3626 to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
3627 very happy such nice free software project as this is available.  If
3628 you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</p>
3629
3630 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3631 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3632 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3633
3634       </div>
3635       <div class="tags">
3636
3637
3638         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3639
3640
3641       </div>
3642     </div>
3643     <div class="padding"></div>
3644
3645     <div class="entry">
3646       <div class="title">
3647         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">Jami/Ring, finally functioning peer to peer communication client</a>
3648       </div>
3649       <div class="date">
3650         19th June 2019
3651       </div>
3652       <div class="body">
3653         <p>Some years ago, in 2016, I
3654 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">wrote
3655 for the first time about</a> the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
3656 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
3657 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
3658 own a mobile phone.  Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
3659 aside until it had seen more development.  A few days ago I decided to
3660 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
3661 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
3662 calls.  But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.</p>
3663
3664 <p>The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
3665 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>.  I
3666 tried doing web search for 'ring' when I discovered it for the first
3667 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
3668 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word.  Now
3669 you can search for 'jami' and this client and
3670 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system</a> is the first hit at
3671 least on duckduckgo.</p>
3672
3673 <p>Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
3674 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
3675 if possible.  If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
3676 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
3677 Jami project.  Jami can also be a normal SIP client.  If the SIP
3678 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
3679 unencrypted.  This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
3680 do anything without encryption.</p>
3681
3682 <p>Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
3683 Android, iOS, and Android TV.  It is included in Debian already.  Jami
3684 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
3685 while Signal do not.
3686 <a href="https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol">The
3687 protocol</a> is described in the Ring project wiki.  The system uses a
3688 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
3689 over UDP.  On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
3690 work.  I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
3691 going to ports 1-49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
3692 port and end up in the low range most of the time.  After talking to
3693 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
3694 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
3695
3696 peering directly with others.  I've been told the developers are
3697 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem.  I also ran
3698 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
3699 Debian Stable (Stretch).  Apparently the protocol changed between
3700 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
3701 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
3702 future.</p>
3703
3704 <p>It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
3705 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet.  The
3706 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)">Tox protocol</a>
3707 and <a href="https://tox.chat/">family of Tox clients</a>.  It might
3708 become the topic of a future blog post.</p>
3709
3710 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3711 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3712 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3713
3714       </div>
3715       <div class="tags">
3716
3717
3718         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3719
3720
3721       </div>
3722     </div>
3723     <div class="padding"></div>
3724
3725     <div class="entry">
3726       <div class="title">
3727         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html">Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål</a>
3728       </div>
3729       <div class="date">
3730         23rd January 2019
3731       </div>
3732       <div class="body">
3733         <p>I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
3734 <a href="http://unknown-horizons.org/">strategispillet Unknown
3735 Horizons</a>, og oversatte de nesten 200 strengene i prosjektet til
3736 bokmål.  Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
3737 inneholdt disse oversettelsene.  Nå er endelig ventetiden over.  Den
3738 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
3739 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons">lastet opp i
3740 Debian</a> for noen få dager siden.  I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
3741 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint.  Fant noen få tekster som
3742 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig.  Har oppdatert
3743 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/">oversettelsen på
3744 Weblate</a>, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)</p>
3745
3746 <p>Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
3747 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)</p>
3748
3749 <p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
3750 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
3751 til min adresse
3752 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
3753 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
3754
3755       </div>
3756       <div class="tags">
3757
3758
3759         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
3760
3761
3762       </div>
3763     </div>
3764     <div class="padding"></div>
3765
3766     <div class="entry">
3767       <div class="title">
3768         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html">Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit</a>
3769       </div>
3770       <div class="date">
3771         22nd January 2019
3772       </div>
3773       <div class="body">
3774         <p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
3775 everything you need to program the <a href="https://microbit.org/">BBC
3776 micro:bit</a> is available from the Debian archive.  All this is
3777 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
3778 packaging team.  The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
3779 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
3780 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
3781 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.</p>
3782
3783 <p>There are three main pieces involved.  The first to enter Debian
3784 was
3785 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash</a>,
3786 which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12.  The next one was
3787 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor</a>, which
3788 showed up 2019-01-13.  The final and hardest part to to into the
3789 archive was
3790 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython</a>,
3791 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
3792 before it was accepted 2019-01-20.  The last one is already in Debian
3793 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days.  This
3794 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
3795 'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
3796 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
3797 catered for.</p>
3798
3799 <p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
3800 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
3801 package</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
3802 package.  This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
3803 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
3804 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.</p>
3805
3806 <p>This should make it easier to have fun.</p>
3807
3808 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3809 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3810 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3811
3812       </div>
3813       <div class="tags">
3814
3815
3816         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3817
3818
3819       </div>
3820     </div>
3821     <div class="padding"></div>
3822
3823     <div class="entry">
3824       <div class="title">
3825         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html">Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</a>
3826       </div>
3827       <div class="date">
3828         15th December 2018
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="body">
3831         <p>A fun way to learn how to program
3832 <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> is to follow the
3833 instructions in the book
3834 "<a href="https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
3835 with Minecraft</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
3836 who like to play with Minecraft.  The book uses a Python library to
3837 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
3838 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
3839 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
3840 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
3841 Minecraft.  The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
3842 and Raspian.  But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
3843 recipes using the free software construction game
3844 <a href="https://minetest.net/">Minetest</a>.</p>
3845
3846 <p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod">a
3847 Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
3848 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
3849 I
3850 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html">uploaded
3851 this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
3852 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
3853 Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away.  The Debian package is
3854 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
3855 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft">the
3856 packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
3857 Salsa.</p>
3858
3859 <p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
3860 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
3861 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
3862 provided via modules in Minetest.  Without the required blocks, a
3863 simple stone block is used instead.  My initial testing with a analog
3864 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
3865 instead used stone arms.</p>
3866
3867 <p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
3868 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes.  The
3869 <a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/">recipes</a>
3870 I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi">found</a> are only
3871 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup.  Are there any
3872 options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>
3873
3874 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3875 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3876 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3877
3878       </div>
3879       <div class="tags">
3880
3881
3882         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3883
3884
3885       </div>
3886     </div>
3887     <div class="padding"></div>
3888
3889     <div class="entry">
3890       <div class="title">
3891         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html">Time for an official MIME type for patches?</a>
3892       </div>
3893       <div class="date">
3894          1st November 2018
3895       </div>
3896       <div class="body">
3897         <p>As part of my involvement in
3898 <a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">the Nikita
3899 archive API project</a>, I've been importing a fairly large lump of
3900 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
3901 go.  I picked a subset of <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/">my
3902 notmuch email database</a>, all public emails sent to me via
3903 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
3904 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
3905 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
3906 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
3907 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">an
3908 official MIME type</a> registered with IANA/IETF.  The output from
3909 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
3910 included in these emails.  At the moment people seem to use either
3911 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered.  It
3912 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
3913 everywhere.</p>
3914
3915 <p>To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought
3916 up the topic on
3917 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types">the
3918 media-types mailing list</a>.  If you are interested in discussion
3919 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
3920 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
3921 to join the discussion?</p>
3922
3923 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3924 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3925 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3926
3927       </div>
3928       <div class="tags">
3929
3930
3931         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
3932
3933
3934       </div>
3935     </div>
3936     <div class="padding"></div>
3937
3938     <div class="entry">
3939       <div class="title">
3940         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
3941       </div>
3942       <div class="date">
3943          4th October 2018
3944       </div>
3945       <div class="body">
3946         <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian.  To try to
3947 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
3948 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
3949 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
3950 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
3951 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
3952 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
3953 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
3954
3955 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
3956 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user.  Next, I
3957 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
3958 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
3959
3960 <p><blockquote><pre>
3961 [Desktop Entry]
3962 Name=Google drive autosync
3963 Type=Application
3964 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
3965 </pre></blockquote></p>
3966
3967 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
3968 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
3969
3970 <p><blockquote><pre>
3971 #!/bin/sh
3972 set -e
3973 cd ~/
3974 cleanup() {
3975     if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
3976         kill $syncpid
3977     fi
3978 }
3979 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
3980 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
3981 syncpdi=$!
3982 while true; do
3983     if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
3984         echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
3985         exit 1
3986     fi
3987     if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
3988         /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
3989     fi
3990     sleep 300
3991 done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
3992 </pre></blockquote></p>
3993
3994 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want.  It can be assumed to be
3995 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
3996 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.</p>
3997
3998 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3999 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4000 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4001
4002       </div>
4003       <div class="tags">
4004
4005
4006         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4007
4008
4009       </div>
4010     </div>
4011     <div class="padding"></div>
4012
4013     <div class="entry">
4014       <div class="title">
4015         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</a>
4016       </div>
4017       <div class="date">
4018          2nd September 2018
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="body">
4021         <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
4022 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
4023 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard.  After searching the
4024 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
4025 to find a recipe that worked.  If you got a kodi instance with its API
4026 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
4027 have check out a nice cover band.</p>
4028
4029 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4030   --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
4031   "params": {"item": { "file":
4032   "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
4033   http://projector.local/jsonrpc</pre></blockquote></p>
4034
4035 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
4036 first argument.  It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
4037 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi.  It is almost like a
4038 Chromecast. :)</p>
4039
4040 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4041 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4042 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4043
4044       </div>
4045       <div class="tags">
4046
4047
4048         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4049
4050
4051       </div>
4052     </div>
4053     <div class="padding"></div>
4054
4055     <div class="entry">
4056       <div class="title">
4057         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html">Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</a>
4058       </div>
4059       <div class="date">
4060         31st July 2018
4061       </div>
4062       <div class="body">
4063         <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
4064 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
4065 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
4066 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox.  The last few days I
4067 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
4068 share it with you.  I would like to publish images on a server under
4069 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
4070 free and open standard to the images I published.  As my primary
4071 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
4072 UTF-8.  Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
4073 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
4074 &lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
4075 of such frames.  In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
4076
4077 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
4078 <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
4079 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
4080 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
4081 NASA.  This proved to work well.  More recently I discovered that
4082 <a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
4083 <a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
4084 <a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
4085 <a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
4086 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news.  For
4087 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
4088 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
4089 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
4090
4091 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
4092 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance.  I adjusted my <a
4093 href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
4094 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
4095 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
4096 RSS file.  I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
4097 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
4098 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not.  The relevant EXIF
4099 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives.  XMP
4100 seem to have the support I need.</p>
4101
4102 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
4103 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
4104 photo managing software.  I ended up using the tags set using this
4105 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
4106
4107 <blockquote><pre>
4108 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
4109   -description='The RSS image description.' \
4110   -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
4111 </pre></blockquote>
4112
4113 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
4114 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject".  I
4115 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
4116 shared with my family.  Images with this keyword set are located and
4117 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
4118
4119 <p>Are there better ways to do this?  Get in touch if you have better
4120 suggestions.</p>
4121
4122 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4123 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4124 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4125
4126       </div>
4127       <div class="tags">
4128
4129
4130         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4131
4132
4133       </div>
4134     </div>
4135     <div class="padding"></div>
4136
4137     <div class="entry">
4138       <div class="title">
4139         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</a>
4140       </div>
4141       <div class="date">
4142         12th July 2018
4143       </div>
4144       <div class="body">
4145         <p>Last night, I wrote
4146 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
4147 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
4148 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
4149 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
4150 approach requiring no setup at all.  It is a single script that take
4151 care of it all.</p>
4152
4153 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
4154 desktop and stream it to Kodi.  This fixed the video quality issue I
4155 saw initially.  It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
4156 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
4157 <a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
4158 Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
4159 GStreamer.  Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial.  Copy
4160 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
4161 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
4162 up on the Kodi screen.  Note, it depend on multicast on the local
4163 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
4164 script must be modified.  Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
4165 I only care about the picture part.</p>
4166
4167 <blockquote><pre>
4168 #!/bin/sh
4169 #
4170 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi.  See
4171 # http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
4172 # for backgorund information.
4173
4174 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
4175 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
4176 # kodi server).  Do the same when interrupting this script.
4177 kodicmd() {
4178     host="$1"
4179     cmd="$2"
4180     params="$3"
4181     curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4182          --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
4183          "http://$host/jsonrpc"
4184 }
4185 cleanup() {
4186     if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
4187         # Stop the playing when we end
4188         playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
4189                             jq .result[].playerid)
4190         kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
4191     fi
4192     if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
4193         kill "$gstpid"
4194     fi
4195 }
4196 trap cleanup EXIT INT
4197
4198 if [ -n "$1" ]; then
4199     kodihost=$1
4200     shift
4201 else
4202     kodihost=kodi.local
4203 fi
4204
4205 mcast=239.255.0.1
4206 mcastport=1234
4207 mcastttl=1
4208
4209 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
4210   cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
4211 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
4212   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
4213   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
4214   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
4215   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
4216   udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
4217   pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
4218   > /dev/null 2>&1 &
4219 gstpid=$!
4220
4221 # Give stream a second to get going
4222 sleep 1
4223
4224 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
4225 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
4226         "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
4227
4228 # wait for gst to end
4229 wait "$gstpid"
4230 </pre></blockquote>
4231
4232 <p>I hope you find the approach useful.  I know I do.</p>
4233
4234 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4235 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4236 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4237
4238       </div>
4239       <div class="tags">
4240
4241
4242         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4243
4244
4245       </div>
4246     </div>
4247     <div class="padding"></div>
4248
4249     <div class="entry">
4250       <div class="title">
4251         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
4252       </div>
4253       <div class="date">
4254         12th July 2018
4255       </div>
4256       <div class="body">
4257         <p>PS: See
4258 <ahref="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
4259 followup post</a> for a even better approach.</p>
4260
4261 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
4262 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
4263 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
4264 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
4265 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
4266 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
4267
4268 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
4269 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
4270 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
4271 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
4272 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
4273 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
4274
4275 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
4276 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
4277 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
4278 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
4279 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
4280 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
4281
4282 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
4283 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
4284 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
4285 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
4286 the programs I work on.</p>
4287
4288 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
4289 rtp and rtsp recipes from
4290 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
4291 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
4292 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
4293
4294 <blockquote><pre>
4295 vlc screen:// --sout \
4296   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
4297 </pre></blockquote>
4298
4299 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
4300 same IP address:</p>
4301
4302 <blockquote><pre>
4303 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
4304   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
4305 </pre></blockquote>
4306
4307 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
4308 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
4309 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
4310 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
4311 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
4312 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
4313 big screen. :)</p>
4314
4315 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
4316 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
4317 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
4318 enough to tell.</p>
4319
4320 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
4321 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
4322 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
4323 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
4324 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
4325 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
4326 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
4327 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
4328 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
4329 the source end
4330
4331 <blockquote><pre>
4332 cvlc screen:// --sout \
4333   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
4334 </pre></blockquote>
4335
4336 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
4337
4338 <blockquote><pre>
4339 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
4340   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
4341 </pre></blockquote>
4342
4343 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
4344 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
4345 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
4346 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
4347 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
4348 difference.</p>
4349
4350 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
4351 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
4352 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
4353 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
4354 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
4355 multicast address on port 1234:
4356
4357 <blockquote><pre>
4358 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
4359   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
4360   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
4361   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
4362   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
4363   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
4364   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
4365     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
4366   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
4367 </pre></blockquote>
4368
4369 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
4370
4371 <blockquote><pre>
4372 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
4373   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
4374 </pre></blockquote>
4375
4376 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
4377 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
4378 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
4379 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
4380 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
4381 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
4382 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
4383
4384 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
4385 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
4386 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
4387 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
4388
4389 <blockquote><pre>
4390 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
4391 </pre></blockquote>
4392
4393 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4394 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4395 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4396
4397       </div>
4398       <div class="tags">
4399
4400
4401         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4402
4403
4404       </div>
4405     </div>
4406     <div class="padding"></div>
4407
4408     <div class="entry">
4409       <div class="title">
4410         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
4411       </div>
4412       <div class="date">
4413          9th July 2018
4414       </div>
4415       <div class="body">
4416         <p>Five years ago,
4417 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
4418 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
4419 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
4420 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
4421 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
4422 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
4423 unstable only this time:
4424
4425 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4426
4427 <pre>
4428   count MIME type
4429   ----- -----------------------
4430      56 image/jpeg
4431      55 image/png
4432      49 image/tiff
4433      48 image/gif
4434      39 image/bmp
4435      38 text/plain
4436      37 audio/mpeg
4437      34 application/ogg
4438      33 audio/x-flac
4439      32 audio/x-mp3
4440      30 audio/x-wav
4441      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
4442      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
4443      27 inode/directory
4444      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
4445      27 audio/x-mpeg
4446      26 application/x-ogg
4447      25 audio/x-mpegurl
4448      25 audio/ogg
4449      24 text/html
4450 </pre>
4451
4452 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
4453 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
4454 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
4455
4456 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
4457 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
4458 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
4459 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
4460 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
4461 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
4462 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
4463 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
4464 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
4465 list like this:</p>
4466
4467 <p><blockquote><pre>
4468 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
4469 Package: anjuta
4470 Package: audacious
4471 Package: baobab
4472 Package: cervisia
4473 Package: chirp
4474 Package: dolphin
4475 Package: doublecmd-common
4476 Package: easytag
4477 Package: enlightenment
4478 Package: ephoto
4479 Package: filelight
4480 Package: gwenview
4481 Package: k4dirstat
4482 Package: kaffeine
4483 Package: kdesvn
4484 Package: kid3
4485 Package: kid3-qt
4486 Package: nautilus
4487 Package: nemo
4488 Package: pcmanfm
4489 Package: pcmanfm-qt
4490 Package: qweborf
4491 Package: ranger
4492 Package: sirikali
4493 Package: spacefm
4494 Package: spacefm
4495 Package: vifm
4496 %
4497 </pre></blockquote></p>
4498
4499 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
4500 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
4501
4502 <p><blockquote><pre>
4503 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
4504 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
4505 %
4506 </pre></blockquote></p>
4507
4508 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
4509 format:</p>
4510
4511 <p><blockquote><pre>
4512 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
4513 Package: cura
4514 Package: meshlab
4515 Package: printrun
4516 %
4517 </pre></blockquote></p>
4518
4519 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
4520
4521 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4522 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4523 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4524
4525       </div>
4526       <div class="tags">
4527
4528
4529         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4530
4531
4532       </div>
4533     </div>
4534     <div class="padding"></div>
4535
4536     <div class="entry">
4537       <div class="title">
4538         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
4539       </div>
4540       <div class="date">
4541          8th July 2018
4542       </div>
4543       <div class="body">
4544         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
4545 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
4546 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
4547 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
4548 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
4549 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
4550 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
4551 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
4552 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
4553 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
4554 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
4555
4556 <p><blockquote><pre>
4557 #!/bin/sh
4558 #
4559 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
4560 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
4561 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
4562 # flag for manual/automatic.
4563
4564 set -e
4565
4566 ignore() {
4567     if [ "$1" ]; then
4568         grep -v "$1"
4569     else
4570         cat
4571     fi
4572 }
4573
4574 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
4575     echo "Upgrading $p"
4576     apt clean
4577     apt install --download-only -y $p
4578     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
4579         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
4580             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
4581             break
4582         fi
4583     done
4584 done
4585 </pre></blockquote></p>
4586
4587 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
4588 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
4589 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
4590 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
4591 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
4592 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
4593 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
4594 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
4595 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
4596
4597 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
4598 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
4599 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
4600 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
4601 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
4602
4603 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
4604 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
4605 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
4606 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
4607 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
4608 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
4609 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
4610
4611 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4612 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4613 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4614
4615       </div>
4616       <div class="tags">
4617
4618
4619         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4620
4621
4622       </div>
4623     </div>
4624     <div class="padding"></div>
4625
4626     <div class="entry">
4627       <div class="title">
4628         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
4629       </div>
4630       <div class="date">
4631         13th February 2018
4632       </div>
4633       <div class="body">
4634         <p>A new version of the
4635 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
4636 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
4637 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
4638 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
4639 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
4640 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
4641 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
4642 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
4643 well.</p>
4644
4645 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
4646 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
4647 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
4648 in Debian.</p>
4649
4650 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4651 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4652 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4653
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="tags">
4656
4657
4658         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4659
4660
4661       </div>
4662     </div>
4663     <div class="padding"></div>
4664
4665     <div class="entry">
4666       <div class="title">
4667         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
4668       </div>
4669       <div class="date">
4670         17th December 2017
4671       </div>
4672       <div class="body">
4673         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
4674 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
4675 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
4676 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
4677 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
4678 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
4679 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
4680 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
4681 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
4682 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
4683 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
4684 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
4685 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
4686
4687 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
4688 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
4689 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
4690 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
4691 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
4692
4693 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
4694 team, flocking together on the
4695 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
4696 mailing list and the
4697 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
4698 IRC channel.</p>
4699
4700 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
4701 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
4702 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
4703
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="tags">
4706
4707
4708         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4709
4710
4711       </div>
4712     </div>
4713     <div class="padding"></div>
4714
4715     <div class="entry">
4716       <div class="title">
4717         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
4718       </div>
4719       <div class="date">
4720          9th October 2017
4721       </div>
4722       <div class="body">
4723         <p>At my nearby maker space,
4724 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
4725 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
4726 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
4727 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
4728 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
4729 as the software involved,
4730 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
4731 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
4732 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
4733 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
4734 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
4735 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
4736 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
4737
4738 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
4739 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
4740 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
4741 on
4742 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4743 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
4744
4745 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
4746 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
4747 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
4748 upstream version.</p>
4749
4750 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
4751 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
4752 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
4753 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
4754 Debian, check out
4755 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
4756 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
4757 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
4758
4759 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4760 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4761 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4762
4763       </div>
4764       <div class="tags">
4765
4766
4767         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4768
4769
4770       </div>
4771     </div>
4772     <div class="padding"></div>
4773
4774     <div class="entry">
4775       <div class="title">
4776         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
4777       </div>
4778       <div class="date">
4779         29th September 2017
4780       </div>
4781       <div class="body">
4782         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
4783 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
4784 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
4785 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
4786 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
4787 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
4788 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
4789 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
4790 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
4791 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
4792 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
4793 listen.</p>
4794
4795 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
4796 visualizing this information up and running for
4797 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
4798 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
4799 library.  The solution is based on the
4800 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
4801 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
4802 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
4803 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
4804 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
4805 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
4806 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
4807 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
4808
4809 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
4810 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
4811 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
4812 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
4813 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
4814 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
4815 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
4816 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
4817
4818 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
4819 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
4820 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
4821 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
4822 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
4823 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
4824 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
4825 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
4826 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
4827 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
4828 mentioned in
4829 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
4830 issue for the topic</a>.
4831
4832 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
4833
4834       </div>
4835       <div class="tags">
4836
4837
4838         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4839
4840
4841       </div>
4842     </div>
4843     <div class="padding"></div>
4844
4845     <div class="entry">
4846       <div class="title">
4847         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
4848       </div>
4849       <div class="date">
4850         24th September 2017
4851       </div>
4852       <div class="body">
4853         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
4854 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
4855 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
4856 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
4857 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
4858 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
4859 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
4860 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
4861 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
4862
4863 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
4864 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
4865 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
4866 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
4867
4868 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
4869 clone of two python scripts:</p>
4870
4871 <ol>
4872
4873 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
4874   testing).</li>
4875
4876 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
4877   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
4878
4879 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
4880   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
4881
4882 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
4883
4884 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
4885   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
4886   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
4887
4888 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
4889   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
4890
4891 </ol>
4892
4893 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
4894 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
4895 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
4896 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
4897 very cheaply
4898 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
4899 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
4900 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
4901
4902 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
4903 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
4904 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
4905 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
4906 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
4907 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
4908 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
4909 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
4910
4911 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
4912 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
4913 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
4914 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
4915 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
4916 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
4917 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
4918 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
4919 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
4920 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
4921 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
4922 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
4923
4924       </div>
4925       <div class="tags">
4926
4927
4928         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4929
4930
4931       </div>
4932     </div>
4933     <div class="padding"></div>
4934
4935     <div class="entry">
4936       <div class="title">
4937         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
4938       </div>
4939       <div class="date">
4940          9th August 2017
4941       </div>
4942       <div class="body">
4943         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
4944 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
4945 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
4946 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
4947 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
4948 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
4949 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
4950
4951 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
4952 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
4953 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
4954 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
4955 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
4956 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
4957 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
4958 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
4959 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
4960 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
4961 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
4962 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
4963 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
4964
4965 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
4966 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
4967 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
4968 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
4969 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
4970 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
4971 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
4972 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
4973 collector for a few days now.</p>
4974
4975 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
4976
4977 <ol>
4978
4979 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
4980
4981 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
4982 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
4983
4984 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
4985
4986 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
4987 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
4988 found a GSM station).</li>
4989
4990 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
4991
4992 </ol>
4993
4994 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
4995 running, I decided to package
4996 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
4997 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
4998 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
4999 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
5000 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
5001
5002 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
5003 commercial tools like
5004 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
5005 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
5006 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
5007 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
5008 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
5009 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
5010 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
5011 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
5012 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
5013 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
5014 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
5015 of government officials...</p>
5016
5017 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
5018 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
5019 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
5020 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
5021 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
5022 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
5023 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
5024 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
5025 one frequency?</p>
5026
5027       </div>
5028       <div class="tags">
5029
5030
5031         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5032
5033
5034       </div>
5035     </div>
5036     <div class="padding"></div>
5037
5038     <div class="entry">
5039       <div class="title">
5040         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
5041       </div>
5042       <div class="date">
5043         25th July 2017
5044       </div>
5045       <div class="body">
5046         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
5047
5048 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
5049 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
5050 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
5051 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
5052 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
5053 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
5054 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
5055 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
5056 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
5057 as a web page</a>.</p>
5058
5059 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
5060 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
5061 in
5062 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
5063 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
5064 and
5065 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
5066 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
5067 project.  I hope
5068 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
5069 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
5070
5071       </div>
5072       <div class="tags">
5073
5074
5075         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5076
5077
5078       </div>
5079     </div>
5080     <div class="padding"></div>
5081
5082     <div class="entry">
5083       <div class="title">
5084         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
5085       </div>
5086       <div class="date">
5087          3rd June 2017
5088       </div>
5089       <div class="body">
5090         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
5091 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
5092 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
5093 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
5094 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
5095 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
5096 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
5097
5098 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
5099
5100 <blockquote>
5101 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
5102 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
5103 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
5104
5105 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
5106 på temaet:</p>
5107 <ol>
5108 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
5109 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
5110 </ol>
5111
5112 </blockquote>
5113
5114 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
5115
5116 <blockquote>
5117 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
5118 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
5119 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
5120
5121 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
5122 temaet:</p>
5123
5124 <ol>
5125 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
5126 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
5127 </ol>
5128
5129 </blockquote>
5130
5131 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
5132 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
5133 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
5134 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
5135 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
5136 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
5137 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
5138
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="tags">
5141
5142
5143         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
5144
5145
5146       </div>
5147     </div>
5148     <div class="padding"></div>
5149
5150     <div class="entry">
5151       <div class="title">
5152         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
5153       </div>
5154       <div class="date">
5155          9th March 2017
5156       </div>
5157       <div class="body">
5158         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
5159 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
5160 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
5161 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
5162 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
5163 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
5164 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
5165 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
5166
5167 <p><blockquote>
5168 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
5169 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
5170 </blockquote></p>
5171
5172 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
5173 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
5174 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
5175 are noticed.</p>
5176
5177 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
5178 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
5179 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
5180 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
5181 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
5182 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
5183
5184 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
5185 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
5186 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
5187 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
5188 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
5189 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
5190
5191 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
5192
5193 <p><blockquote><pre>
5194 [...]
5195 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
5196 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
5197         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
5198         age:    7863311
5199         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
5200         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
5201         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
5202         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
5203         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
5204         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
5205         per-op statistics
5206                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5207              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
5208              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
5209               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
5210               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
5211             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
5212                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
5213                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
5214               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
5215                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
5216              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
5217                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
5218               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
5219                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
5220               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
5221                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
5222              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
5223          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
5224               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
5225               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
5226             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
5227               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5228
5229 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
5230 [...]
5231 </pre></blockquote></p>
5232
5233 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
5234 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
5235 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
5236 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
5237 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
5238 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
5239 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
5240 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
5241 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
5242 mount options.</p>
5243
5244 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
5245 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
5246 But according to
5247 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
5248 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
5249 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
5250 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
5251 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
5252 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
5253
5254 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
5255 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
5256 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
5257 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
5258 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
5259
5260       </div>
5261       <div class="tags">
5262
5263
5264         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
5265
5266
5267       </div>
5268     </div>
5269     <div class="padding"></div>
5270
5271     <div class="entry">
5272       <div class="title">
5273         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
5274       </div>
5275       <div class="date">
5276          3rd March 2017
5277       </div>
5278       <div class="body">
5279         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
5280 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
5281 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
5282 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
5283 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
5284 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
5285 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
5286 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
5287 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
5288
5289 <p><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
5290
5291 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
5292 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
5293 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
5294 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
5295 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
5296 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
5297 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
5298 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
5299
5300       </div>
5301       <div class="tags">
5302
5303
5304         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5305
5306
5307       </div>
5308     </div>
5309     <div class="padding"></div>
5310
5311     <div class="entry">
5312       <div class="title">
5313         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
5314       </div>
5315       <div class="date">
5316          1st March 2017
5317       </div>
5318       <div class="body">
5319         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
5320 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
5321 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
5322 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
5323 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
5324 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
5325 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
5326 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
5327 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
5328 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
5329 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
5330
5331 <blockquote><pre>
5332 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5333   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
5334   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
5335      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5336      sleep 1; \
5337   done
5338 300
5339 0+1 oppføringer inn
5340 0+1 oppføringer ut
5341 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
5342 4
5343 8
5344 12
5345 17
5346 21
5347 %
5348 </pre></blockquote>
5349
5350 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
5351 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
5352 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
5353 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
5354
5355 <blockquote><pre>
5356 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5357   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
5358   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
5359      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5360      sleep 1; \
5361   done
5362 1079
5363 0+1 oppføringer inn
5364 0+1 oppføringer ut
5365 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
5366 433
5367 1028
5368 1031
5369 1035
5370 1038
5371 %
5372 </pre></blockquote>
5373
5374 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
5375 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
5376
5377 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
5378 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
5379 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
5380 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
5381 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
5382 post.</p>
5383
5384       </div>
5385       <div class="tags">
5386
5387
5388         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5389
5390
5391       </div>
5392     </div>
5393     <div class="padding"></div>
5394
5395     <div class="entry">
5396       <div class="title">
5397         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
5398       </div>
5399       <div class="date">
5400          9th January 2017
5401       </div>
5402       <div class="body">
5403         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
5404 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
5405 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
5406 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
5407 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
5408 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
5409 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
5410 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
5411 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
5412 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
5413 this:
5414
5415 <p><pre>
5416 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
5417  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
5418  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
5419  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
5420  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
5421  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
5422  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
5423  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
5424  8  * * *
5425  9  * * *
5426 [...]
5427 </pre></p>
5428
5429 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
5430 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
5431 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
5432 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
5433 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
5434 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
5435 traceroute request.</p>
5436
5437 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
5438 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
5439 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
5440 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
5441 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
5442
5443 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
5444 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
5445 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
5446 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
5447 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
5448 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
5449 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
5450 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
5451 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
5452
5453 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
5454 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
5455 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
5456 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
5457 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
5458 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
5459 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
5460 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
5461 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
5462 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
5463 render the page (in HAR format using
5464 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
5465 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
5466 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
5467 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
5468 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
5469
5470 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
5471 src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
5472
5473 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
5474 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
5475 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
5476 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
5477 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
5478 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
5479 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
5480 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
5481 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
5482 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
5483 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
5484 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
5485 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
5486 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
5487
5488 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
5489 src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
5490
5491 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
5492 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
5493 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
5494 question.
5495 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
5496 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
5497 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
5498 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
5499 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
5500 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
5501 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
5502
5503 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
5504 src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
5505
5506 <p>In the process, I came across the
5507 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
5508 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
5509 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
5510 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
5511 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
5512 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
5513 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
5514 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
5515 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
5516 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
5517 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
5518 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
5519 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
5520 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
5521
5522 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
5523 src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
5524
5525 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
5526 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
5527 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
5528 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
5529
5530 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
5531 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
5532 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
5533 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
5534 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
5535 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
5536 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
5537
5538 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
5539 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
5540 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
5541 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
5542 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
5543 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
5544 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
5545
5546 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
5547 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
5548 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
5549 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
5550
5551 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5552 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5553 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5554
5555       </div>
5556       <div class="tags">
5557
5558
5559         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5560
5561
5562       </div>
5563     </div>
5564     <div class="padding"></div>
5565
5566     <div class="entry">
5567       <div class="title">
5568         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
5569       </div>
5570       <div class="date">
5571         23rd December 2016
5572       </div>
5573       <div class="body">
5574         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
5575 readers probably know, I have been working on the
5576 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
5577 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
5578 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
5579 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
5580 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
5581 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
5582 metadata format.  And today,
5583 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
5584 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
5585 ie using fnmatch():</p>
5586
5587 <p><pre>
5588 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
5589   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
5590 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
5591 Name: pymissile
5592 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
5593 Package: pymissile
5594 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
5595 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
5596 Name: libnxt
5597 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
5598 Package: libnxt
5599 ---
5600 Identifier: t2n [generic]
5601 Name: t2n
5602 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
5603 Package: t2n
5604 ---
5605 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
5606 Name: python-nxt
5607 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
5608 Package: python-nxt
5609 ---
5610 Identifier: nbc [generic]
5611 Name: nbc
5612 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
5613 Package: nbc
5614 %
5615 </pre></p>
5616
5617 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
5618 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
5619
5620 <p><pre>
5621 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
5622 pymissile
5623 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
5624 libnxt
5625 nbc
5626 python-nxt
5627 t2n
5628 %
5629 </pre></p>
5630
5631 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
5632 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
5633
5634 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
5635 make the most of the hardware they have, please help
5636 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
5637 metadata for your package following the guidelines</a> documented in
5638 the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such information, among the
5639 several hundred hardware specific packages in Debian. The Isenkram
5640 database on the other hand contain 101 packages, mostly related to USB
5641 dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware mapping in AppStream are
5642 LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as part of my involvement in
5643 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
5644 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
5645 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
5646 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
5647 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
5648 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
5649 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
5650 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
5651 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
5652
5653 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5654 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5655 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5656
5657       </div>
5658       <div class="tags">
5659
5660
5661         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5662
5663
5664       </div>
5665     </div>
5666     <div class="padding"></div>
5667
5668     <div class="entry">
5669       <div class="title">
5670         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
5671       </div>
5672       <div class="date">
5673         20th December 2016
5674       </div>
5675       <div class="body">
5676         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
5677 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
5678 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
5679 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
5680 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
5681 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
5682 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
5683 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
5684 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
5685 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
5686
5687 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
5688
5689 <p><pre>
5690 % isenkram-lookup
5691 bluez
5692 cheese
5693 ethtool
5694 fprintd
5695 fprintd-demo
5696 gkrellm-thinkbat
5697 hdapsd
5698 libpam-fprintd
5699 pidgin-blinklight
5700 thinkfan
5701 tlp
5702 tp-smapi-dkms
5703 tp-smapi-source
5704 tpb
5705 %
5706 </pre></p>
5707
5708 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
5709 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
5710 I have all the firmware my machine need:
5711
5712 <p><pre>
5713 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5714 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
5715 %
5716 </pre></p>
5717
5718 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
5719 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
5720 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
5721 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
5722 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
5723 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
5724 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
5725 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
5726
5727 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
5728 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
5729 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
5730
5731 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
5732 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
5733 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
5734 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
5735 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
5736 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
5737 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
5738 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
5739 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
5740 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
5741 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
5742 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
5743 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
5744 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
5745 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
5746 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
5747 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
5748 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
5749 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
5750 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
5751 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
5752 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
5753 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
5754 zd1211-firmware</p>
5755
5756 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
5757 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
5758 maintainer to
5759 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
5760 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
5761 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
5762 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
5763
5764 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
5765 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
5766 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
5767 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
5768 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
5769
5770       </div>
5771       <div class="tags">
5772
5773
5774         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5775
5776
5777       </div>
5778     </div>
5779     <div class="padding"></div>
5780
5781     <div class="entry">
5782       <div class="title">
5783         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
5784       </div>
5785       <div class="date">
5786         11th December 2016
5787       </div>
5788       <div class="body">
5789         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
5790
5791 <p>In my early years, I played
5792 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
5793 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
5794 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
5795 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
5796 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
5797 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
5798 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
5799 small.</p>
5800
5801 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
5802 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
5803 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
5804 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
5805 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
5806 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
5807 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
5808 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
5809 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
5810
5811 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
5812 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
5813 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
5814 advantages of the
5815 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
5816 where information about each planet is easily available with common
5817 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
5818 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
5819 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
5820 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
5821 after less then a week.</p>
5822
5823 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
5824 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
5825 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
5826
5827 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5828 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5829 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5830
5831       </div>
5832       <div class="tags">
5833
5834
5835         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5836
5837
5838       </div>
5839     </div>
5840     <div class="padding"></div>
5841
5842     <div class="entry">
5843       <div class="title">
5844         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
5845       </div>
5846       <div class="date">
5847         25th November 2016
5848       </div>
5849       <div class="body">
5850         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
5851 installation system, observing how using
5852 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
5853 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
5854 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
5855 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
5856 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
5857 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
5858 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
5859 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
5860 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
5861 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
5862 up the process make perfect sense.
5863
5864 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
5865 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
5866 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
5867 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
5868 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
5869 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
5870 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
5871 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
5872 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
5873 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
5874
5875 <blockquote><pre>
5876 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
5877 </pre></blockquote>
5878
5879 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
5880 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
5881 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
5882 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
5883 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
5884 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
5885 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
5886 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
5887 tested its impact.</p>
5888
5889
5890       </div>
5891       <div class="tags">
5892
5893
5894         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5895
5896
5897       </div>
5898     </div>
5899     <div class="padding"></div>
5900
5901     <div class="entry">
5902       <div class="title">
5903         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
5904       </div>
5905       <div class="date">
5906         24th November 2016
5907       </div>
5908       <div class="body">
5909         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
5910 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
5911 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
5912 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
5913 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
5914 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
5915 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
5916 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
5917 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
5918 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
5919 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
5920 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
5921 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
5922 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
5923 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
5924 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
5925 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
5926 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
5927 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
5928
5929 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
5930 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
5931 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
5932 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
5933 api.apertium.org.  Se
5934 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
5935 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
5936 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
5937 nynorsk.</p>
5938
5939 <hr/>
5940
5941 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
5942 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
5943 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
5944 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
5945 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
5946 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
5947 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
5948 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
5949 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
5950 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
5951 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
5952 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
5953 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
5954 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
5955 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
5956 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
5957 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
5958 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
5959 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
5960
5961 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
5962 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
5963 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
5964 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
5965 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
5966 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
5967 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
5968 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
5969 nynorsk.</p>
5970
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="tags">
5973
5974
5975         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
5976
5977
5978       </div>
5979     </div>
5980     <div class="padding"></div>
5981
5982     <div class="entry">
5983       <div class="title">
5984         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
5985       </div>
5986       <div class="date">
5987         13th November 2016
5988       </div>
5989       <div class="body">
5990         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
5991 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
5992 multi-threaded program, finally
5993 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
5994 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
5995 months since
5996 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
5997 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
5998 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
5999 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
6000 JavaScript libraries.</p>
6001
6002 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
6003
6004 <p><blockquote>
6005 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
6006 </blockquote></p>
6007
6008 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
6009 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
6010 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
6011 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
6012 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
6013
6014 <p><blockquote>
6015 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
6016 </blockquote></p>
6017
6018 <p>See the project home page and the
6019 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
6020 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
6021 working.</p>
6022
6023       </div>
6024       <div class="tags">
6025
6026
6027         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6028
6029
6030       </div>
6031     </div>
6032     <div class="padding"></div>
6033
6034     <div class="entry">
6035       <div class="title">
6036         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
6037       </div>
6038       <div class="date">
6039          4th November 2016
6040       </div>
6041       <div class="body">
6042         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
6043 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
6044 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
6045 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
6046 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
6047 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
6048 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
6049 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
6050 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
6051 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
6052 and had
6053 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
6054 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
6055 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
6056 loved ones. :)</p>
6057
6058 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
6059 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
6060 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
6061 building
6062 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
6063 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
6064 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
6065 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
6066 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
6067 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
6068 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
6069 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
6070
6071 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
6072
6073 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
6074 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
6075 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
6076 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
6077 the battery status run low:</p>
6078
6079 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
6080    <source src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
6081 </video></p>
6082
6083 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
6084 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
6085
6086 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
6087 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
6088 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
6089 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
6090 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
6091 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
6092 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
6093 should.</p>
6094
6095       </div>
6096       <div class="tags">
6097
6098
6099         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6100
6101
6102       </div>
6103     </div>
6104     <div class="padding"></div>
6105
6106     <div class="entry">
6107       <div class="title">
6108         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
6109       </div>
6110       <div class="date">
6111         10th October 2016
6112       </div>
6113       <div class="body">
6114         <p>In July
6115 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
6116 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
6117 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
6118 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
6119
6120 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
6121 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
6122 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
6123 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
6124 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
6125 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
6126 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
6127 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
6128 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
6129 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
6130 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
6131 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
6132 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
6133 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
6134 time.</p>
6135
6136 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
6137 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
6138 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
6139 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
6140 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
6141 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
6142 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
6143
6144 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
6145 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
6146 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
6147 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
6148 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
6149 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
6150 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
6151 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
6152 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
6153 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
6154
6155 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
6156
6157 <ol>
6158
6159 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
6160 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
6161 know, so you need to install it.
6162
6163 <pre>
6164 apt install git tor chromium
6165 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
6166 </pre></li>
6167
6168 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
6169 block below.</li>
6170
6171 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
6172 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
6173
6174 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
6175 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
6176 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
6177 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
6178 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
6179
6180 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
6181 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
6182 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
6183 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
6184 a associated contact database.</li>
6185
6186 </ol>
6187
6188 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
6189 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
6190 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
6191 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
6192 example
6193 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
6194 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
6195 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
6196 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
6197 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
6198 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
6199 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
6200 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
6201 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
6202 working on Debian Stable.</p>
6203
6204 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
6205 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
6206 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
6207
6208 <pre>
6209 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
6210 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
6211 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
6212 --- a/js/background.js
6213 +++ b/js/background.js
6214 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
6215          });
6216      });
6217
6218 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
6219 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
6220      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
6221 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
6222 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
6223      var messageReceiver;
6224      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
6225          if (messageReceiver) {
6226 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
6227 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
6228 --- a/js/expire.js
6229 +++ b/js/expire.js
6230 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
6231  ;(function() {
6232      'use strict';
6233 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
6234 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
6235
6236      window.extension = window.extension || {};
6237
6238 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
6239 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
6240 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
6241 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
6242 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
6243              return {
6244                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
6245                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
6246 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
6247 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
6248 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
6249              };
6250          },
6251          clearQR: function() {
6252 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
6253 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
6254 --- a/options.html
6255 +++ b/options.html
6256 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
6257          &lt;div class='nav'>
6258            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
6259            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
6260 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
6261 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
6262 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
6263 +
6264 +         &lt;/div>
6265            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
6266            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
6267            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
6268 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
6269 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
6270 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
6271 +#!/bin/sh
6272 +set -e
6273 +cd $(dirname $0)
6274 +mkdir -p userdata
6275 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
6276 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
6277 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
6278 +fi
6279 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
6280 +exec chromium \
6281 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
6282 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
6283 EOF
6284 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
6285 </pre>
6286
6287 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6288 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6289 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6290
6291       </div>
6292       <div class="tags">
6293
6294
6295         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6296
6297
6298       </div>
6299     </div>
6300     <div class="padding"></div>
6301
6302     <div class="entry">
6303       <div class="title">
6304         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
6305       </div>
6306       <div class="date">
6307          7th October 2016
6308       </div>
6309       <div class="body">
6310         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
6311 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
6312 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
6313 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
6314 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
6315 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
6316 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
6317 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
6318 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
6319 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
6320 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
6321 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
6322 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
6323
6324 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
6325 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
6326 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
6327 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
6328 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
6329 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
6330
6331 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
6332 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
6333 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
6334 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
6335 identifiers.</p>
6336
6337 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
6338 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
6339 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
6340 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
6341 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
6342 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
6343 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
6344 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
6345 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
6346 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
6347 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
6348 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
6349 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
6350 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
6351
6352 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
6353 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
6354 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
6355 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
6356 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
6357 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
6358 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
6359
6360 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
6361 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
6362 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
6363 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
6364 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
6365 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
6366 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
6367 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
6368 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
6369 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
6370 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
6371 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
6372 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
6373 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
6374 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
6375 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
6376 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
6377
6378 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
6379 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
6380 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
6381 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
6382 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
6383 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
6384 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
6385
6386 <p><pre>
6387 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
6388     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
6389 </pre></p>
6390
6391 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
6392 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
6393 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
6394 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
6395 to detect this?</p>
6396
6397 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
6398 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
6399 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
6400 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
6401 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
6402 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
6403 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
6404 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
6405 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
6406 directly if no such class exist.</p>
6407
6408 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
6409 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
6410 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
6411
6412 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
6413 please join us on our IRC channel
6414 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
6415 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
6416 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
6417 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
6418
6419 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6420 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6421 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6422
6423       </div>
6424       <div class="tags">
6425
6426
6427         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
6428
6429
6430       </div>
6431     </div>
6432     <div class="padding"></div>
6433
6434     <div class="entry">
6435       <div class="title">
6436         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
6437       </div>
6438       <div class="date">
6439         30th August 2016
6440       </div>
6441       <div class="body">
6442         <p>In April we
6443 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
6444 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
6445 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
6446 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
6447 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
6448 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
6449 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
6450 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
6451 contributing using
6452 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
6453 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
6454 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
6455 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
6456 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
6457 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
6458 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
6459
6460 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
6461 electronic form.</p>
6462
6463       </div>
6464       <div class="tags">
6465
6466
6467         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6468
6469
6470       </div>
6471     </div>
6472     <div class="padding"></div>
6473
6474     <div class="entry">
6475       <div class="title">
6476         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
6477       </div>
6478       <div class="date">
6479         11th August 2016
6480       </div>
6481       <div class="body">
6482         <p>This summer, I read a great article
6483 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
6484 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
6485 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
6486 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
6487 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
6488 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
6489 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
6490 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
6491 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
6492 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
6493 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
6494 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
6495
6496 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
6497 get the system into Debian.  I
6498 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
6499 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
6500 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
6501 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
6502 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
6503 profiling information included in the source package.
6504 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
6505
6506 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
6507 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
6508
6509 <p><blockquote><pre>
6510 coz run --- program-to-run
6511 </pre></blockquote></p>
6512
6513 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
6514 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
6515 most, use a web browser and either point it to
6516 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
6517 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
6518 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
6519 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
6520 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
6521 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
6522 targeted experiments.</p>
6523
6524 <p>A video published by ACM
6525 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
6526 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
6527 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
6528 titled
6529 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
6530 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
6531
6532 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
6533 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
6534 because it uses a
6535 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
6536 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
6537 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
6538 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
6539
6540 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
6541 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
6542 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
6543 C++ libraries.</p>
6544
6545       </div>
6546       <div class="tags">
6547
6548
6549         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
6550
6551
6552       </div>
6553     </div>
6554     <div class="padding"></div>
6555
6556     <div class="entry">
6557       <div class="title">
6558         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
6559       </div>
6560       <div class="date">
6561          7th July 2016
6562       </div>
6563       <div class="body">
6564         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
6565 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
6566 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
6567 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
6568 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
6569 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
6570 microphone The initial idea had been to just
6571 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
6572 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
6573 until a few days ago.</p>
6574
6575 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
6576 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
6577 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
6578 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
6579 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
6580 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
6581 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
6582
6583 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
6584 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
6585 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
6586 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
6587 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
6588 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
6589 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
6590 him.</p>
6591
6592 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
6593 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
6594 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
6595 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
6596 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
6597 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
6598 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
6599 devices it would work for.</p>
6600
6601 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
6602 followed some instructions
6603 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
6604 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
6605 machine with Debian testing:</p>
6606
6607 <p><pre>
6608 adb reboot-bootloader
6609 fastboot oem rebootRUU
6610 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
6611 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
6612 fastboot reboot
6613 </pre></p>
6614
6615 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
6616 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
6617 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
6618 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
6619 too.</p>
6620
6621 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
6622 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
6623 like this:</p>
6624
6625 <p><pre>
6626 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
6627 </pre>
6628
6629 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
6630 this:</p>
6631
6632 <p><pre>
6633 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
6634 </pre></p>
6635
6636 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
6637 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
6638 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
6639 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
6640 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
6641
6642       </div>
6643       <div class="tags">
6644
6645
6646         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6647
6648
6649       </div>
6650     </div>
6651     <div class="padding"></div>
6652
6653     <div class="entry">
6654       <div class="title">
6655         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
6656       </div>
6657       <div class="date">
6658          3rd July 2016
6659       </div>
6660       <div class="body">
6661         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
6662 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
6663 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
6664 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
6665 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
6666 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
6667 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
6668 Github source, compared it to the source in
6669 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
6670 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
6671 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
6672 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
6673 the recipe how I did it.</p>
6674
6675 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
6676
6677 <pre>
6678 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
6679 </pre>
6680
6681 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
6682 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
6683
6684 <pre>
6685 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
6686 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
6687 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
6688 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
6689 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
6690          });
6691      });
6692
6693 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
6694 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
6695 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
6696 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
6697      var messageReceiver;
6698      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
6699          if (messageReceiver) {
6700 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
6701 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
6702 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
6703 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
6704  ;(function() {
6705      'use strict';
6706 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
6707 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
6708
6709      window.extension = window.extension || {};
6710
6711 EOF
6712 </pre>
6713
6714 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
6715 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
6716 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
6717 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
6718
6719 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
6720 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
6721
6722 <pre>
6723 #!/bin/sh
6724 cd $(dirname $0)
6725 mkdir -p userdata
6726 exec chromium \
6727   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
6728   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
6729 </pre>
6730
6731 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
6732 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
6733 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
6734 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
6735 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
6736
6737 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
6738 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
6739 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
6740 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
6741 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
6742 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
6743 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
6744 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
6745 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
6746 Signal from my laptop.
6747
6748 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
6749 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
6750 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
6751 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
6752 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
6753 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
6754 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
6755 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
6756 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
6757 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
6758 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
6759 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
6760
6761 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
6762 on this topic in
6763 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
6764 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
6765 phone</a>.</p>
6766
6767       </div>
6768       <div class="tags">
6769
6770
6771         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6772
6773
6774       </div>
6775     </div>
6776     <div class="padding"></div>
6777
6778     <div class="entry">
6779       <div class="title">
6780         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
6781       </div>
6782       <div class="date">
6783          6th June 2016
6784       </div>
6785       <div class="body">
6786         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
6787 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
6788 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
6789 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
6790 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
6791 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
6792 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
6793 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
6794 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
6795
6796 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
6797 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
6798 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
6799 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
6800 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
6801 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
6802 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
6803
6804 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
6805 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
6806 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
6807 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
6808 toten and parole.</p>
6809
6810 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
6811 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
6812 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
6813 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
6814 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
6815 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
6816 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
6817 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
6818 formats.</p>
6819
6820       </div>
6821       <div class="tags">
6822
6823
6824         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6825
6826
6827       </div>
6828     </div>
6829     <div class="padding"></div>
6830
6831     <div class="entry">
6832       <div class="title">
6833         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
6834       </div>
6835       <div class="date">
6836          5th June 2016
6837       </div>
6838       <div class="body">
6839         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
6840 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
6841 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
6842 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
6843 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
6844 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
6845 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
6846 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
6847 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
6848 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
6849 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
6850 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
6851 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
6852 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
6853 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
6854 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
6855 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
6856 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
6857 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
6858 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
6859
6860 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
6861 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
6862 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
6863 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
6864 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
6865 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
6866 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
6867 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
6868 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
6869 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
6870 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
6871 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
6872 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
6873 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
6874
6875 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
6876 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
6877 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
6878 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
6879 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
6880 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
6881 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
6882 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
6883
6884 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
6885 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
6886 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
6887 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
6888 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
6889 information is collected from
6890 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
6891 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
6892 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
6893 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
6894 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
6895 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
6896 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
6897 type (preferably
6898 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
6899 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
6900 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
6901 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
6902
6903 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
6904 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
6905 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
6906
6907 <p><blockquote><pre>
6908 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
6909 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
6910   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
6911     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
6912     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
6913     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
6914   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
6915 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
6916 </pre></blockquote></p>
6917
6918 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
6919 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
6920 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
6921 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
6922
6923 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
6924 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
6925 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
6926
6927 <p><blockquote><pre>
6928 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
6929 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
6930 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
6931 %
6932 </pre></blockquote></p>
6933
6934 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
6935 MimeType= line.</p>
6936
6937 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
6938 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
6939 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
6940 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
6941 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
6942 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
6943 fixed. :)</p>
6944
6945       </div>
6946       <div class="tags">
6947
6948
6949         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6950
6951
6952       </div>
6953     </div>
6954     <div class="padding"></div>
6955
6956     <div class="entry">
6957       <div class="title">
6958         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
6959       </div>
6960       <div class="date">
6961         25th May 2016
6962       </div>
6963       <div class="body">
6964         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
6965 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
6966 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
6967 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
6968 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
6969 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
6970 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
6971 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
6972 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
6973 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
6974 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
6975 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
6976
6977 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
6978 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
6979 is going away and is generally being replaced by
6980 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
6981 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
6982 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
6983 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
6984 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
6985 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
6986 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
6987 and see if it is recognised.</p>
6988
6989 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
6990 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
6991 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
6992
6993 <p><blockquote><pre>
6994 % isenkram-lookup
6995 bluez
6996 cheese
6997 fprintd
6998 fprintd-demo
6999 gkrellm-thinkbat
7000 hdapsd
7001 libpam-fprintd
7002 pidgin-blinklight
7003 thinkfan
7004 tleds
7005 tp-smapi-dkms
7006 tp-smapi-source
7007 tpb
7008 %p
7009 </pre></blockquote></p>
7010
7011 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
7012 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
7013 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
7014 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
7015 See
7016 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
7017 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
7018
7019       </div>
7020       <div class="tags">
7021
7022
7023         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7024
7025
7026       </div>
7027     </div>
7028     <div class="padding"></div>
7029
7030     <div class="entry">
7031       <div class="title">
7032         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
7033       </div>
7034       <div class="date">
7035         23rd May 2016
7036       </div>
7037       <div class="body">
7038         <p>Yesterday I updated the
7039 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
7040 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
7041 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
7042 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
7043 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
7044 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
7045 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
7046 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
7047 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
7048 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
7049
7050 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
7051 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
7052 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
7053 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
7054 capacity.</p>
7055
7056 <p align="center"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
7057
7058 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
7059 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
7060 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
7061 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
7062
7063 <p align="center"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
7064
7065 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
7066 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
7067 shrinking. :(</p>
7068
7069 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
7070 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
7071 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
7072 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
7073 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
7074 machine.</p>
7075
7076 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
7077 check out the
7078 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
7079 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
7080 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
7081 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
7082 Patches are very welcome.</p>
7083
7084 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7085 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7086 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7087
7088       </div>
7089       <div class="tags">
7090
7091
7092         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7093
7094
7095       </div>
7096     </div>
7097     <div class="padding"></div>
7098
7099     <div class="entry">
7100       <div class="title">
7101         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
7102       </div>
7103       <div class="date">
7104         12th May 2016
7105       </div>
7106       <div class="body">
7107         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
7108 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
7109 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
7110 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
7111 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
7112 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7113 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
7114 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
7115 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
7116 great if you could help out with
7117 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
7118 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
7119
7120       </div>
7121       <div class="tags">
7122
7123
7124         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7125
7126
7127       </div>
7128     </div>
7129     <div class="padding"></div>
7130
7131     <div class="entry">
7132       <div class="title">
7133         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
7134       </div>
7135       <div class="date">
7136          8th May 2016
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="body">
7139         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
7140 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
7141
7142 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
7143 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
7144 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
7145 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
7146 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
7147 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
7148 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
7149 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
7150 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
7151 players.</p>
7152
7153 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
7154 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
7155 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
7156 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
7157 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
7158 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
7159 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
7160 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
7161 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
7162 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
7163 support most file formats.</p>
7164
7165 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
7166 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
7167 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
7168 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
7169 listed first in the table.</p>
7170
7171 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
7172 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
7173 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
7174 support?</p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192          4th May 2016
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         A friend of mine made me aware of
7196 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
7197 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
7198 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
7199
7200 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
7201 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
7202 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
7203 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
7204 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
7205 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
7206 production started.</p>
7207
7208 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
7209 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
7210 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
7211
7212       </div>
7213       <div class="tags">
7214
7215
7216         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7217
7218
7219       </div>
7220     </div>
7221     <div class="padding"></div>
7222
7223     <div class="entry">
7224       <div class="title">
7225         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
7226       </div>
7227       <div class="date">
7228         10th April 2016
7229       </div>
7230       <div class="body">
7231         <p>During this weekends
7232 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
7233 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
7234 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
7235 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
7236 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
7237 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
7238 contributing using
7239 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
7240 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
7241 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
7242 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
7243 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
7244 contributors</a>.</p>
7245
7246 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
7247 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
7248 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
7249 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
7250 available for many more languages.</p>
7251
7252       </div>
7253       <div class="tags">
7254
7255
7256         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7257
7258
7259       </div>
7260     </div>
7261     <div class="padding"></div>
7262
7263     <div class="entry">
7264       <div class="title">
7265         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
7266       </div>
7267       <div class="date">
7268          7th April 2016
7269       </div>
7270       <div class="body">
7271         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
7272 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
7273 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
7274 But I might be wrong.</p>
7275
7276 <p>According to
7277 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
7278 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
7279 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
7280 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
7281 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
7282 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
7283 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
7284 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
7285 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
7286 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
7287
7288 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
7289 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
7290 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
7291 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
7292 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
7293 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
7294 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
7295 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7296 team status page</a>, and
7297 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
7298 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
7299
7300 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
7301 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
7302 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
7303 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
7304 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
7305 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
7306 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
7307 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
7308 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
7309 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
7310 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
7311 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
7312
7313       </div>
7314       <div class="tags">
7315
7316
7317         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7318
7319
7320       </div>
7321     </div>
7322     <div class="padding"></div>
7323
7324     <div class="entry">
7325       <div class="title">
7326         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
7327       </div>
7328       <div class="date">
7329         23rd March 2016
7330       </div>
7331       <div class="body">
7332         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
7333 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
7334 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
7335 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
7336 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
7337 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
7338 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
7339 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
7340
7341 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
7342 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
7343 and lifetime prediction by running:
7344
7345 <p><pre>
7346 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
7347 </pre></p>
7348
7349 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
7350
7351 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
7352 entry yet):</p>
7353
7354 <p><pre>
7355 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
7356 </pre></p>
7357
7358 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
7359 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
7360 few years of data.</p>
7361
7362 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
7363 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
7364 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
7365 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
7366 know.  The issue is reported as
7367 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
7368 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
7369 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
7370 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
7371 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
7372
7373 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
7374 check out the
7375 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
7376 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
7377 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
7378 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
7379 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
7380
7381       </div>
7382       <div class="tags">
7383
7384
7385         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7386
7387
7388       </div>
7389     </div>
7390     <div class="padding"></div>
7391
7392     <div class="entry">
7393       <div class="title">
7394         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
7395       </div>
7396       <div class="date">
7397         15th March 2016
7398       </div>
7399       <div class="body">
7400         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
7401 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
7402 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
7403 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
7404 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
7405 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
7406 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
7407 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
7408 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
7409 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
7410 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
7411
7412 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
7413 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
7414 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
7415 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
7416 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
7417 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
7418 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
7419 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
7420 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
7421 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
7422 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
7423
7424 <p align="center"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
7425
7426 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
7427 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
7428 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
7429 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
7430 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
7431 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
7432
7433 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
7434 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
7435 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
7436 and graphing.</p>
7437
7438 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
7439 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
7440 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
7441 on
7442 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
7443 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
7444
7445       </div>
7446       <div class="tags">
7447
7448
7449         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7450
7451
7452       </div>
7453     </div>
7454     <div class="padding"></div>
7455
7456     <div class="entry">
7457       <div class="title">
7458         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
7459       </div>
7460       <div class="date">
7461         19th February 2016
7462       </div>
7463       <div class="body">
7464         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
7465 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
7466 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
7467 the code in the package in question, preferably in
7468 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
7469 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
7470
7471 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
7472 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
7473 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
7474 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
7475 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
7476 out what was wrong with
7477 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
7478 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
7479 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
7480 semi-automatically.</p>
7481
7482 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
7483 file based on the code in the source package,
7484 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
7485 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
7486 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
7487 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
7488 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
7489 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
7490 option in
7491 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
7492 blog posts from 2014</a>.
7493
7494 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
7495
7496 <p><pre>
7497 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
7498 </pre></p>
7499
7500 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
7501 this might not be the best option.</p>
7502
7503 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
7504 this approach in
7505 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
7506 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
7507 dpkg-copyright' option:
7508
7509 <p><pre>
7510 cme update dpkg-copyright
7511 </pre></p>
7512
7513 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
7514 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
7515
7516 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
7517 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
7518 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
7519 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
7520 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
7521 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
7522 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
7523 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
7524 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
7525 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
7526
7527 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
7528 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
7529 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
7530 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
7531
7532 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
7533 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
7534 planet.debian.org.</p>
7535
7536 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7537 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7538 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7539
7540 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
7541 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
7542
7543 <p><pre>
7544 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
7545   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
7546 </pre></p>
7547
7548 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
7549 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
7550 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
7551 with my packages in the future.</p>
7552
7553 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
7554 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
7555 command line.</p>
7556
7557       </div>
7558       <div class="tags">
7559
7560
7561         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7562
7563
7564       </div>
7565     </div>
7566     <div class="padding"></div>
7567
7568     <div class="entry">
7569       <div class="title">
7570         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
7571       </div>
7572       <div class="date">
7573          4th February 2016
7574       </div>
7575       <div class="body">
7576         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
7577 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
7578 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
7579 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
7580 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
7581 about. :)</p>
7582
7583 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
7584 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
7585 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
7586 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
7587 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
7588 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
7589
7590 <blockquote><pre>
7591 % apt install appstream
7592 [...]
7593 % apt update
7594 [...]
7595 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
7596   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
7597 firmware-qlogic
7598 %
7599 </pre></blockquote>
7600
7601 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
7602 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
7603 a way appstream can use.</p>
7604
7605 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
7606 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
7607 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
7608 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
7609 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
7610 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
7611
7612 <blockquote><pre>
7613 % apt install appstream
7614 [...]
7615 % apt update
7616 [...]
7617 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
7618   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
7619 bkchem
7620 phototonic
7621 inkscape
7622 shutter
7623 tetzle
7624 geeqie
7625 xia
7626 pinta
7627 gthumb
7628 karbon
7629 comix
7630 mirage
7631 viewnior
7632 postr
7633 ristretto
7634 kolourpaint4
7635 eog
7636 eom
7637 gimagereader
7638 midori
7639 %
7640 </pre></blockquote>
7641
7642 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
7643 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
7644
7645       </div>
7646       <div class="tags">
7647
7648
7649         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7650
7651
7652       </div>
7653     </div>
7654     <div class="padding"></div>
7655
7656     <div class="entry">
7657       <div class="title">
7658         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
7659       </div>
7660       <div class="date">
7661         24th January 2016
7662       </div>
7663       <div class="body">
7664         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
7665 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
7666 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
7667 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
7668 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
7669 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
7670 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
7671 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
7672 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
7673 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
7674 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
7675 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
7676 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
7677 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
7678 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
7679 entities.</p>
7680
7681 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
7682
7683 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
7684 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
7685 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
7686 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
7687 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
7688 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
7689 tool to do so is called
7690 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
7691 discovered it when I read
7692 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
7693 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
7694 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
7695 The python program was in Debian, but
7696 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
7697 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
7698 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
7699 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
7700 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
7701 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
7702 are now included
7703 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
7704
7705 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
7706 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
7707 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
7708 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
7709 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
7710 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
7711 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
7712 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
7713 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
7714 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
7715 about yourself with the services.</p>
7716
7717 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
7718 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
7719 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
7720 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
7721 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
7722 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
7723 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
7724 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
7725 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
7726 things.  A similar technique have been
7727 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
7728 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
7729 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
7730 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
7731 public.</p>
7732
7733 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
7734 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
7735 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
7736 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
7737
7738 <p>(I have uploaded
7739 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
7740 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
7741 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
7742
7743       </div>
7744       <div class="tags">
7745
7746
7747         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
7748
7749
7750       </div>
7751     </div>
7752     <div class="padding"></div>
7753
7754     <div class="entry">
7755       <div class="title">
7756         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
7757       </div>
7758       <div class="date">
7759         15th January 2016
7760       </div>
7761       <div class="body">
7762         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
7763 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
7764 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
7765 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
7766 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
7767 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
7768 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
7769 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
7770 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
7771 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
7772 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
7773 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
7774 was not the first to propose this, as the
7775 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
7776 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
7777 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
7778 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
7779
7780 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
7781 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
7782 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
7783 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
7784 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
7785
7786 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
7787 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
7788 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
7789 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
7790 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
7791 done in /etc/.</p>
7792
7793 <blockquote><pre>
7794 apt install apt-transport-tor
7795 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
7796 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
7797 </pre></blockquote>
7798
7799 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
7800 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
7801 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
7802 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
7803
7804 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
7805 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
7806 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
7807 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
7808 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
7809 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
7810
7811 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
7812 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
7813 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
7814 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
7815 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
7816
7817 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
7818 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
7819 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
7820 system.</p>
7821
7822       </div>
7823       <div class="tags">
7824
7825
7826         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7827
7828
7829       </div>
7830     </div>
7831     <div class="padding"></div>
7832
7833     <div class="entry">
7834       <div class="title">
7835         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
7836       </div>
7837       <div class="date">
7838         23rd December 2015
7839       </div>
7840       <div class="body">
7841         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
7842 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
7843 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
7844 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
7845 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
7846 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
7847
7848 <p>A few days I came across
7849 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
7850 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
7851 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
7852 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
7853 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
7854 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
7855 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
7856 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
7857 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
7858 discovered the developer
7859 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
7860 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
7861 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
7862 archive.</p>
7863
7864 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
7865 it into Debian, where it currently
7866 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
7867 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
7868
7869 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
7870 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
7871 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
7872 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
7873 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
7874 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
7875 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
7876 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
7877 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
7878 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
7879 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
7880 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
7881
7882 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
7883 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
7884 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
7885 package show up in unstable.</p>
7886
7887       </div>
7888       <div class="tags">
7889
7890
7891         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
7892
7893
7894       </div>
7895     </div>
7896     <div class="padding"></div>
7897
7898     <div class="entry">
7899       <div class="title">
7900         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
7901       </div>
7902       <div class="date">
7903         20th December 2015
7904       </div>
7905       <div class="body">
7906         <p>Around three years ago, I created
7907 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
7908 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
7909 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
7910 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
7911 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
7912 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
7913 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
7914 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
7915 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
7916 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
7917 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
7918 with.</p>
7919
7920 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
7921 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
7922 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
7923 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
7924 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
7925 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
7926 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
7927 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
7928 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
7929 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
7930 Debian version of appstream.</p>
7931
7932 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
7933 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
7934 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
7935 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
7936 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
7937 how do add the required
7938 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
7939 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
7940 this content:</p>
7941
7942 <blockquote><pre>
7943 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
7944 &lt;component&gt;
7945   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
7946   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
7947   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
7948   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
7949   &lt;description&gt;
7950     &lt;p&gt;
7951       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
7952       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
7953       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
7954       launcher.
7955     &lt;/p&gt;
7956   &lt;/description&gt;
7957   &lt;provides&gt;
7958     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
7959   &lt;/provides&gt;
7960 &lt;/component&gt;
7961 </pre></blockquote>
7962
7963 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
7964 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
7965 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
7966 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
7967 0202.</p>
7968
7969 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
7970 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
7971 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
7972 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
7973 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
7974 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
7975 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
7976 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
7977
7978 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
7979 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
7980 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
7981 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
7982 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
7983
7984 <blockquote><pre>
7985 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
7986 </pre></blockquote>
7987
7988 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
7989 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
7990 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
7991 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
7992 question.</p>
7993
7994 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
7995 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
7996
7997 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
7998 try running this command on the command line:</p>
7999
8000 <blockquote><pre>
8001 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
8002 </pre></blockquote>
8003
8004 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
8005 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
8006 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
8007
8008       </div>
8009       <div class="tags">
8010
8011
8012         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8013
8014
8015       </div>
8016     </div>
8017     <div class="padding"></div>
8018
8019     <div class="entry">
8020       <div class="title">
8021         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
8022       </div>
8023       <div class="date">
8024         30th November 2015
8025       </div>
8026       <div class="body">
8027         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
8028 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
8029 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
8030 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
8031 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
8032
8033 <blockquote>
8034
8035 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
8036
8037 <blockquote>
8038 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
8039
8040 The first step is to choose a
8041 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
8042 code.<br/>
8043
8044 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
8045 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
8046
8047 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
8048 work<br/>
8049
8050 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
8051 </blockquote>
8052
8053 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
8054 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
8055 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
8056 0x57</a></small></p>
8057
8058 <p>As the Debian Website
8059 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
8060 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
8061 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
8062 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
8063 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
8064 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
8065 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
8066 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
8067 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
8068 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
8069 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
8070 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
8071 Freedom">FaiF</a>
8072 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
8073 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
8074 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
8075 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
8076 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
8077 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
8078 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
8079 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
8080 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
8081 In March the SFC supported a
8082 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
8083 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
8084 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
8085 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
8086 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
8087 conferences
8088 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
8089 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
8090 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
8091 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
8092 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
8093 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
8094 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
8095 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
8096 Software.</p>
8097
8098 <p>If you support Free Software,
8099 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
8100 what the SFC do, agree with their
8101 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
8102 principles</a>, are happy about their
8103 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
8104 work on a project that is an SFC
8105 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
8106 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
8107 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
8108 Allan Webber</a>,
8109 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
8110 Smith</a>,
8111 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
8112 Bacon</a>, myself and
8113 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
8114 becoming a
8115 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
8116 next week your donation will be
8117 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
8118 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
8119 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
8120 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
8121 social media accounts.</p>
8122
8123 </blockquote>
8124
8125 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
8126 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
8127 supporter too?</p>
8128
8129       </div>
8130       <div class="tags">
8131
8132
8133         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8134
8135
8136       </div>
8137     </div>
8138     <div class="padding"></div>
8139
8140     <div class="entry">
8141       <div class="title">
8142         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
8143       </div>
8144       <div class="date">
8145         17th November 2015
8146       </div>
8147       <div class="body">
8148         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
8149 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
8150 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
8151 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
8152 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
8153 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
8154 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
8155 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
8156 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
8157 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
8158
8159 <pre>
8160 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
8161       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
8162 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
8163 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
8164 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
8165 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
8166 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
8167 </pre>
8168
8169 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
8170 my old key.</p>
8171
8172 <p>If you signed my old key
8173 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
8174 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
8175 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
8176 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
8177
8178       </div>
8179       <div class="tags">
8180
8181
8182         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8183
8184
8185       </div>
8186     </div>
8187     <div class="padding"></div>
8188
8189     <div class="entry">
8190       <div class="title">
8191         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
8192       </div>
8193       <div class="date">
8194         24th September 2015
8195       </div>
8196       <div class="body">
8197         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
8198 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
8199 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
8200 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
8201 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
8202 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
8203 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
8204
8205 <img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
8206
8207 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
8208 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
8209 by someone else.  I found
8210 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
8211 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
8212 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
8213 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
8214 from him.  Via
8215 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
8216 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
8217 discovered
8218 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
8219 available in Debian.</p>
8220
8221 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
8222 battery stats ever since. Now my
8223 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
8224 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
8225 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
8226 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
8227
8228 <pre>
8229 #!/bin/sh
8230 # Inspired by
8231 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
8232 # See also
8233 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
8234 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
8235
8236 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
8237     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
8238
8239 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
8240     (
8241         printf "timestamp,"
8242         for f in $files; do
8243             printf "%s," $f
8244         done
8245         echo
8246     ) > "$logfile"
8247 fi
8248
8249 log_battery() {
8250     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
8251     # when several log processes run in parallel.
8252     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
8253         for f in $files; do \
8254             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
8255         done)
8256     echo "$msg"
8257 }
8258
8259 cd /sys/class/power_supply
8260
8261 for bat in BAT*; do
8262     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
8263 done
8264 </pre>
8265
8266 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
8267 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
8268 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
8269 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
8270 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
8271 The code for the Debian package
8272 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
8273 available on github</a>.</p>
8274
8275 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
8276
8277 <pre>
8278 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
8279 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
8280 [...]
8281 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
8282 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
8283 </pre>
8284
8285 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
8286 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
8287 battery.</p>
8288
8289 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
8290 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
8291 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
8292 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
8293 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
8294 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
8295 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
8296 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
8297 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
8298 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
8299 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
8300 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
8301 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
8302 Linux too.</p>
8303
8304 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
8305 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
8306 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
8307 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
8308 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
8309 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
8310 load).</p>
8311
8312 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
8313 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
8314 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
8315 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
8316 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
8317 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
8318 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
8319 those.</p>
8320
8321 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
8322 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
8323 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
8324 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
8325 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
8326 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
8327 specific.</p>
8328
8329       </div>
8330       <div class="tags">
8331
8332
8333         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8334
8335
8336       </div>
8337     </div>
8338     <div class="padding"></div>
8339
8340     <div class="entry">
8341       <div class="title">
8342         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
8343       </div>
8344       <div class="date">
8345          5th July 2015
8346       </div>
8347       <div class="body">
8348         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
8349 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
8350 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
8351 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
8352 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
8353 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
8354 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
8355 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
8356 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
8357 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
8358 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
8359
8360 <p>One tip I got was to use the
8361 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
8362 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
8363 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
8364 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
8365 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
8366 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
8367
8368 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
8369 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
8370 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
8371 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
8372 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
8373 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
8374 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
8375 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
8376 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
8377 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
8378 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
8379 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
8380 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
8381 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
8382 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
8383
8384 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
8385 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
8386 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
8387 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
8388
8389 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
8390 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
8391
8392 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
8393 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
8394 different
8395 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
8396 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
8397
8398       </div>
8399       <div class="tags">
8400
8401
8402         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8403
8404
8405       </div>
8406     </div>
8407     <div class="padding"></div>
8408
8409     <div class="entry">
8410       <div class="title">
8411         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
8412       </div>
8413       <div class="date">
8414          3rd July 2015
8415       </div>
8416       <div class="body">
8417         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
8418 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
8419 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
8420 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
8421 flickering.</p>
8422
8423 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
8424 still as
8425 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
8426 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
8427 good help from
8428 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
8429 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
8430 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
8431 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
8432 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
8433 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
8434 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
8435 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
8436 deteriorated since X41.</p>
8437
8438 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
8439 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
8440 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
8441 have suggestions.</p>
8442
8443 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
8444 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
8445 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
8446
8447       </div>
8448       <div class="tags">
8449
8450
8451         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8452
8453
8454       </div>
8455     </div>
8456     <div class="padding"></div>
8457
8458     <div class="entry">
8459       <div class="title">
8460         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
8461       </div>
8462       <div class="date">
8463         22nd November 2014
8464       </div>
8465       <div class="body">
8466         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
8467 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
8468 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
8469 courtesy of
8470 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
8471 Schubert</a> and
8472 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
8473 McVittie</a>.
8474
8475 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
8476 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
8477 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
8478 you upgrade:</p>
8479
8480 <p><blockquote><pre>
8481 Package: systemd-sysv
8482 Pin: release o=Debian
8483 Pin-Priority: -1
8484 </pre></blockquote><p>
8485
8486 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
8487 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
8488 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
8489 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
8490 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
8491
8492 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
8493 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
8494 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
8495 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
8496 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
8497 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
8498
8499 <p><blockquote><pre>
8500 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
8501 </pre></blockquote><p>
8502
8503 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
8504
8505 <p><blockquote><pre>
8506 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
8507 </pre></blockquote><p>
8508
8509 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
8510 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
8511
8512 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
8513 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
8514 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
8515 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
8516 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
8517 Jessie is released.</p>
8518
8519 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
8520 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
8521 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
8522 line.</p>
8523
8524       </div>
8525       <div class="tags">
8526
8527
8528         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8529
8530
8531       </div>
8532     </div>
8533     <div class="padding"></div>
8534
8535     <div class="entry">
8536       <div class="title">
8537         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
8538       </div>
8539       <div class="date">
8540         10th November 2014
8541       </div>
8542       <div class="body">
8543         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
8544 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
8545 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
8546
8547 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
8548 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
8549 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
8550 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
8551 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
8552 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
8553 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
8554 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
8555 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
8556 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
8557 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
8558 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
8559 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
8560 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
8561 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
8562
8563 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
8564 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
8565 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
8566 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
8567 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
8568 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
8569 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
8570 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
8571 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
8572 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
8573 were fairly easy, and
8574 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
8575 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
8576 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
8577 useful approach.</p>
8578
8579 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
8580 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
8581 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
8582 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
8583 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
8584 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
8585 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
8586 this:</p>
8587
8588 <p><blockquote><pre>
8589 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
8590   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
8591 </pre></blockquote></p>
8592
8593 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
8594 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
8595
8596 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
8597 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
8598 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
8599 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
8600 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
8601 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
8602 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
8603 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
8604 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
8605 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
8606 system.</p>
8607
8608 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
8609 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
8610 SMTorP. :)</p>
8611
8612       </div>
8613       <div class="tags">
8614
8615
8616         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8617
8618
8619       </div>
8620     </div>
8621     <div class="padding"></div>
8622
8623     <div class="entry">
8624       <div class="title">
8625         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
8626       </div>
8627       <div class="date">
8628         22nd October 2014
8629       </div>
8630       <div class="body">
8631         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
8632 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
8633 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
8634 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
8635 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
8636 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
8637 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
8638 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
8639 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
8640 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
8641 lists I recently took over:</p>
8642
8643 <p><blockquote><pre>
8644 % time listadmin xiph
8645 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8646 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8647
8648 real    0m1.709s
8649 user    0m0.232s
8650 sys     0m0.012s
8651 %
8652 </pre></blockquote></p>
8653
8654 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
8655 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
8656 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
8657 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
8658 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
8659 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
8660 program.</p>
8661
8662 <p>If you install
8663 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
8664 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
8665 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
8666
8667 <p><blockquote><pre>
8668 username username@example.org
8669 spamlevel 23
8670 default discard
8671 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
8672
8673 password secret
8674 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
8675 mailman-list@lists.example.com
8676
8677 password hidden
8678 other-list@otherserver.example.org
8679 </pre></blockquote></p>
8680
8681 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
8682 learn the details.</p>
8683
8684 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
8685 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
8686 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
8687 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
8688
8689 <p><blockquote><pre>
8690 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
8691 </pre></blockquote></p>
8692
8693 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
8694 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
8695 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
8696 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
8697 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
8698 email.</p>
8699
8700 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
8701 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
8702 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
8703 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
8704 software.</p>
8705
8706 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8707 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8708 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8709
8710 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
8711 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
8712 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
8713 sure why.</p>
8714
8715       </div>
8716       <div class="tags">
8717
8718
8719         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
8720
8721
8722       </div>
8723     </div>
8724     <div class="padding"></div>
8725
8726     <div class="entry">
8727       <div class="title">
8728         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
8729       </div>
8730       <div class="date">
8731         17th October 2014
8732       </div>
8733       <div class="body">
8734         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
8735 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
8736 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
8737 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
8738 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
8739 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
8740 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
8741
8742 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
8743 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
8744 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
8745 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
8746 of this story.)</p>
8747
8748 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
8749 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
8750 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
8751 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
8752 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
8753 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
8754 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
8755 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
8756 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
8757 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
8758
8759 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
8760 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
8761 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
8762 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
8763
8764 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
8765 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
8766
8767 <p><blockquote><pre>
8768 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
8769 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
8770 </pre></blockquote></p>
8771
8772 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
8773 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
8774 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
8775 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
8776 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
8777 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
8778 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
8779 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
8780
8781 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
8782 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
8783
8784 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
8785 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
8786 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
8787 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
8788 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
8789
8790 <p><blockquote><pre>
8791 Task: isenkram-packages
8792 Section: hardware
8793 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8794  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
8795  proposed.
8796 Test-new-install: show show
8797 Relevance: 8
8798 Packages: for-current-hardware
8799
8800 Task: isenkram-firmware
8801 Section: hardware
8802 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8803  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
8804  packages are proposed.
8805 Test-new-install: mark show
8806 Relevance: 8
8807 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
8808 </pre></blockquote></p>
8809
8810 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
8811 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
8812 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
8813 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
8814 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
8815
8816 <p><blockquote><pre>
8817 #!/bin/sh
8818 #
8819 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
8820 export PATH
8821 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
8822 </pre></blockquote></p>
8823
8824 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
8825 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
8826
8827 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
8828 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
8829 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
8830 install.</p>
8831
8832 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
8833 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
8834 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
8835
8836       </div>
8837       <div class="tags">
8838
8839
8840         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
8841
8842
8843       </div>
8844     </div>
8845     <div class="padding"></div>
8846
8847     <div class="entry">
8848       <div class="title">
8849         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
8850       </div>
8851       <div class="date">
8852          4th October 2014
8853       </div>
8854       <div class="body">
8855         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
8856 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
8857 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
8858 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
8859
8860 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
8861
8862 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
8863 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
8864 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
8865
8866       </div>
8867       <div class="tags">
8868
8869
8870         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8871
8872
8873       </div>
8874     </div>
8875     <div class="padding"></div>
8876
8877     <div class="entry">
8878       <div class="title">
8879         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
8880       </div>
8881       <div class="date">
8882          4th October 2014
8883       </div>
8884       <div class="body">
8885         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
8886 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
8887 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
8888 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
8889 Dibb.</p>
8890
8891 <p>I just wrapped up
8892 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
8893 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
8894 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
8895 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
8896 0.17.</p>
8897
8898 <ul>
8899
8900  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
8901  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
8902    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
8903  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
8904  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
8905  <li>Fix include orders</li>
8906  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
8907  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
8908  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
8909    the palette size is the same.</li>
8910  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
8911  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
8912  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
8913  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
8914    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
8915
8916 </ul>
8917
8918 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
8919 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
8920 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
8921
8922       </div>
8923       <div class="tags">
8924
8925
8926         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8927
8928
8929       </div>
8930     </div>
8931     <div class="padding"></div>
8932
8933     <div class="entry">
8934       <div class="title">
8935         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
8936       </div>
8937       <div class="date">
8938         26th September 2014
8939       </div>
8940       <div class="body">
8941         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8942 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
8943 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
8944 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
8945 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
8946 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
8947 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
8948 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
8949 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
8950 future.  The
8951 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
8952 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
8953 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
8954 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
8955 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
8956
8957 <p>First, download the test ISO via
8958 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
8959 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
8960 or rsync (use
8961 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
8962 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
8963 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
8964 install with some tweaking.</p>
8965
8966 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
8967 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
8968
8969 <p><blockquote><pre>
8970 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
8971 </pre></blockquote></p>
8972
8973 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
8974 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
8975 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
8976 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
8977
8978 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
8979 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
8980 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
8981 your need.</p>
8982
8983 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
8984 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
8985 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
8986 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
8987 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
8988 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
8989 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
8990 days.</p>
8991
8992 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
8993 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
8994 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
8995 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
8996 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
8997 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
8998 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
8999 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
9000 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
9001
9002 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
9003 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
9004 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
9005
9006       </div>
9007       <div class="tags">
9008
9009
9010         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9011
9012
9013       </div>
9014     </div>
9015     <div class="padding"></div>
9016
9017     <div class="entry">
9018       <div class="title">
9019         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
9020       </div>
9021       <div class="date">
9022         25th September 2014
9023       </div>
9024       <div class="body">
9025         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
9026 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
9027 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
9028 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
9029 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
9030 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
9031 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
9032 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
9033 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
9034 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
9035 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
9036 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
9037 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
9038
9039 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
9040 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
9041 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
9042 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
9043 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
9044 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
9045 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
9046 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
9047 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
9048 list</a>. :)</p>
9049
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="tags">
9052
9053
9054         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
9055
9056
9057       </div>
9058     </div>
9059     <div class="padding"></div>
9060
9061     <div class="entry">
9062       <div class="title">
9063         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="date">
9066         16th September 2014
9067       </div>
9068       <div class="body">
9069         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
9070 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
9071 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
9072 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
9073 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
9074 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
9075 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
9076 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
9077 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
9078 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
9079 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
9080 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
9081 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
9082 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
9083
9084 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
9085 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
9086 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
9087 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
9088 depend on the small and clever package
9089 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
9090 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
9091 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
9092 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
9093 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
9094 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
9095 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
9096 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
9097 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
9098 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
9099 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
9100
9101 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
9102 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
9103 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
9104 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
9105 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
9106 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
9107 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
9108 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
9109 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
9110 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
9111 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
9112 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
9113 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
9114 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
9115 dialog.</p>
9116
9117 <p><table>
9118
9119 <tr>
9120 <th>Machine/setup</th>
9121 <th>Original tasksel</th>
9122 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
9123 <th>Reduction</th>
9124 </tr>
9125
9126 <tr>
9127 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
9128 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
9129 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
9130 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
9131 </tr>
9132
9133 <tr>
9134 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
9135 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
9136 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
9137 <td>23 min 40%</td>
9138 </tr>
9139
9140 <tr>
9141 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
9142 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
9143 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
9144 <td>11 min 50%</td>
9145 </tr>
9146
9147 <tr>
9148 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
9149 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
9150 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
9151 <td>2 min 33%</td>
9152 </tr>
9153
9154 <tr>
9155 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
9156 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
9157 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
9158 <td>4 min 21%</td>
9159 </tr>
9160
9161 </table></p>
9162
9163 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
9164 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
9165 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
9166 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
9167 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
9168 installed.</p>
9169
9170 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
9171 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
9172 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
9173 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
9174 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
9175 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
9176 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
9177 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
9178 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
9179 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
9180 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
9181 for the entire installation.</p>
9182
9183 <p>I've implemented this in the
9184 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
9185 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
9186 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
9187 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
9188 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
9189
9190 <p><blockquote><pre>
9191 #!/bin/sh
9192 set -e
9193 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
9194 info() {
9195     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
9196 }
9197 error() {
9198     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
9199 }
9200 override_install() {
9201     apt-install eatmydata || true
9202     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
9203         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
9204             file=/usr/bin/$bin
9205             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
9206             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
9207                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
9208                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
9209                     > /target$file.edu
9210                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
9211                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
9212                     --rename --quiet --add $file
9213                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
9214             else
9215                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
9216             fi
9217         done
9218     else
9219         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
9220     fi
9221 }
9222
9223 override_install
9224 </pre></blockquote></p>
9225
9226 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
9227 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
9228
9229 <p><blockquote><pre>
9230 #! /bin/sh -e
9231 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
9232 error() {
9233     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
9234 }
9235 remove_install_override() {
9236     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
9237         file=/usr/bin/$bin
9238         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
9239             rm /target$file
9240             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
9241                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
9242             rm /target$file.edu
9243         else
9244             error "Missing divert for $file."
9245         fi
9246     done
9247     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
9248 }
9249
9250 remove_install_override
9251 </pre></blockquote></p>
9252
9253 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
9254 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
9255 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
9256
9257 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
9258 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
9259 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
9260 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
9261 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
9262 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
9263 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
9264 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
9265 everyone.</p>
9266
9267 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
9268 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
9269 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
9270 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
9271
9272 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
9273 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
9274 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
9275 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
9276 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
9277
9278 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
9279 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
9280 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
9281 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
9282 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
9283
9284       </div>
9285       <div class="tags">
9286
9287
9288         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9289
9290
9291       </div>
9292     </div>
9293     <div class="padding"></div>
9294
9295     <div class="entry">
9296       <div class="title">
9297         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
9298       </div>
9299       <div class="date">
9300         10th September 2014
9301       </div>
9302       <div class="body">
9303         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
9304 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
9305 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
9306 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
9307 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
9308 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
9309 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
9310 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
9311 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
9312 those problems are gone now.</p>
9313
9314 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
9315 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
9316 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
9317 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
9318 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
9319
9320 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
9321 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
9322 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
9323
9324 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
9325 line:</p>
9326
9327 <p><blockquote><pre>
9328 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
9329 </pre></blockquote></p>
9330
9331 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
9332 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
9333 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
9334 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
9335
9336 <p><blockquote><pre>
9337 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
9338 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
9339 %
9340 </pre></blockquote></p>
9341
9342 <p>Now if only
9343 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
9344 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
9345 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
9346 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
9347 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
9348 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
9349 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
9350 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
9351 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
9352
9353       </div>
9354       <div class="tags">
9355
9356
9357         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9358
9359
9360       </div>
9361     </div>
9362     <div class="padding"></div>
9363
9364     <div class="entry">
9365       <div class="title">
9366         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
9367       </div>
9368       <div class="date">
9369         17th June 2014
9370       </div>
9371       <div class="body">
9372         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9373 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
9374 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
9375 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
9376 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
9377
9378 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
9379 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
9380 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
9381 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
9382 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
9383 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
9384 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
9385 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
9386 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
9387 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
9388 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
9389 goals.</p>
9390
9391 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
9392 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
9393 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
9394 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
9395 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
9396 chapters together into one large web page (aka
9397 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
9398 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
9399 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
9400 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
9401 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
9402 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
9403 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
9404 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
9405 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
9406 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
9407 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
9408 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
9409 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
9410 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
9411 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
9412 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
9413 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
9414 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
9415
9416 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
9417 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
9418 track the English original.  For this we use the
9419 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
9420 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
9421 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
9422 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
9423 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
9424 files), which the translations update with the native language
9425 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
9426 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
9427 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
9428 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
9429 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
9430 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
9431 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
9432 of the documentation.</p>
9433
9434 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
9435 recommend using
9436 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
9437 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
9438 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
9439 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
9440 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
9441 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
9442 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
9443 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
9444
9445 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
9446 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
9447 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
9448 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
9449 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
9450 translated images by storing translated versions in
9451 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
9452 package maintainers know more.</p>
9453
9454 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
9455 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
9456 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
9457 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
9458 PDF version</a> or the
9459 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
9460 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
9461 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
9462
9463 <p>To learn more, check out
9464 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
9465 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
9466 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
9467 manual on the wiki</a> and
9468 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
9469 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
9470
9471       </div>
9472       <div class="tags">
9473
9474
9475         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9476
9477
9478       </div>
9479     </div>
9480     <div class="padding"></div>
9481
9482     <div class="entry">
9483       <div class="title">
9484         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
9485       </div>
9486       <div class="date">
9487         23rd April 2014
9488       </div>
9489       <div class="body">
9490         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
9491 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
9492 So I implemented one, using
9493 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
9494 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
9495 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
9496 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
9497 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
9498 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
9499
9500 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
9501 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
9502 packages to install.  The first part is in
9503 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
9504 this:</p>
9505
9506 <p><blockquote><pre>
9507 Task: isenkram
9508 Section: hardware
9509 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
9510  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
9511  proposed.
9512 Test-new-install: mark show
9513 Relevance: 8
9514 Packages: for-current-hardware
9515 </pre></blockquote></p>
9516
9517 <p>The second part is in
9518 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
9519 this:</p>
9520
9521 <p><blockquote><pre>
9522 #!/bin/sh
9523 #
9524 (
9525     isenkram-lookup
9526     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
9527 ) | sort -u
9528 </pre></blockquote></p>
9529
9530 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
9531 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
9532 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
9533 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
9534 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
9535 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
9536
9537 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
9538 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
9539 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
9540 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
9541 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
9542 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
9543 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
9544 the python-apt code (bug
9545 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
9546 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
9547 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
9548 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
9549 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
9550 unstable today.</p>
9551
9552 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
9553 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
9554 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
9555 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
9556 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
9557 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
9558 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
9559 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
9560 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
9561
9562 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
9563 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
9564 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
9565 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
9566 package.  See also
9567 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
9568 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
9569 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
9570 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
9571
9572       </div>
9573       <div class="tags">
9574
9575
9576         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9577
9578
9579       </div>
9580     </div>
9581     <div class="padding"></div>
9582
9583     <div class="entry">
9584       <div class="title">
9585         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
9586       </div>
9587       <div class="date">
9588         15th April 2014
9589       </div>
9590       <div class="body">
9591         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
9592 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
9593 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
9594 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
9595 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
9596 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
9597
9598 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
9599 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
9600 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
9601 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
9602 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
9603 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
9604 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
9605
9606 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
9607 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
9608 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
9609 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
9610 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
9611 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
9612 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
9613 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
9614 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
9615 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
9616 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
9617 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
9618
9619 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
9620 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
9621 become root:</p>
9622
9623 <p><pre>
9624 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
9625   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
9626   u-boot-tools
9627 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
9628   freedom-maker
9629 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
9630 </pre></p>
9631
9632 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
9633 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
9634 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
9635 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
9636 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
9637 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
9638 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
9639 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
9640
9641 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
9642 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
9643 the preseed values:</p>
9644
9645 <p><pre>
9646 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
9647 </pre></p>
9648
9649 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
9650 it still work.</p>
9651
9652 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
9653 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
9654 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
9655 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
9656 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
9657 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
9658 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
9659
9660 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9661 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9662 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9663 irc.debian.org)</a> and
9664 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9665 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9666
9667       </div>
9668       <div class="tags">
9669
9670
9671         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9672
9673
9674       </div>
9675     </div>
9676     <div class="padding"></div>
9677
9678     <div class="entry">
9679       <div class="title">
9680         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
9681       </div>
9682       <div class="date">
9683          9th April 2014
9684       </div>
9685       <div class="body">
9686         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
9687 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
9688 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
9689 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
9690 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
9691 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
9692 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
9693 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
9694 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
9695 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
9696 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
9697 have looked at a system called
9698 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
9699 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
9700
9701 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
9702 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
9703 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
9704 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
9705 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
9706 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
9707 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
9708 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
9709 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
9710 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
9711 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
9712 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
9713 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
9714
9715 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
9716 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
9717 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
9718 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
9719 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
9720 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
9721 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
9722 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
9723 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
9724 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
9725 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
9726 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
9727 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
9728 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
9729 account.</p>
9730
9731 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
9732 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
9733 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
9734 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
9735 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
9736 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
9737 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
9738
9739 <p><blockquote><pre>
9740 [s3c]
9741 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9742 backend-login: API-login
9743 backend-password: API-password
9744 fs-passphrase: local-password
9745 </pre></blockquote></p>
9746
9747 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
9748 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
9749 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
9750 details and password to create it:</p>
9751
9752 <p><blockquote><pre>
9753 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
9754 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9755   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9756 Enter backend login:
9757 Enter backend password:
9758 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
9759 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
9760 Enter encryption password:
9761 Confirm encryption password:
9762 Generating random encryption key...
9763 Creating metadata tables...
9764 Dumping metadata...
9765 ..objects..
9766 ..blocks..
9767 ..inodes..
9768 ..inode_blocks..
9769 ..symlink_targets..
9770 ..names..
9771 ..contents..
9772 ..ext_attributes..
9773 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9774 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
9775 # </pre></blockquote></p>
9776
9777 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
9778
9779 <p><blockquote><pre>
9780 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9781   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9782 Using 4 upload threads.
9783 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
9784 Reading metadata...
9785 ..objects..
9786 ..blocks..
9787 ..inodes..
9788 ..inode_blocks..
9789 ..symlink_targets..
9790 ..names..
9791 ..contents..
9792 ..ext_attributes..
9793 Mounting filesystem...
9794 # df -h /s3ql
9795 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
9796 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
9797 #
9798 </pre></blockquote></p>
9799
9800 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
9801 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
9802 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
9803 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
9804 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
9805 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
9806
9807 <p><blockquote><pre>
9808 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
9809 #
9810 </pre></blockquote></p>
9811
9812 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
9813 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
9814 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
9815 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
9816 file system:</p>
9817
9818 <p><blockquote><pre>
9819 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
9820 Using cached metadata.
9821 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
9822 Checking DB integrity...
9823 Creating temporary extra indices...
9824 Checking lost+found...
9825 Checking cached objects...
9826 Checking names (refcounts)...
9827 Checking contents (names)...
9828 Checking contents (inodes)...
9829 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
9830 Checking objects (reference counts)...
9831 Checking objects (backend)...
9832 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
9833 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
9834 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
9835 Checking objects (sizes)...
9836 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
9837 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
9838 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
9839 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
9840 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
9841 Checking inodes (sizes)...
9842 Checking extended attributes (names)...
9843 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
9844 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
9845 Checking directory reachability...
9846 Checking unix conventions...
9847 Checking referential integrity...
9848 Dropping temporary indices...
9849 Backing up old metadata...
9850 Dumping metadata...
9851 ..objects..
9852 ..blocks..
9853 ..inodes..
9854 ..inode_blocks..
9855 ..symlink_targets..
9856 ..names..
9857 ..contents..
9858 ..ext_attributes..
9859 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9860 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
9861 #
9862 </pre></blockquote></p>
9863
9864 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
9865 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
9866 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
9867 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
9868 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
9869 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
9870 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
9871 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
9872 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
9873 working set.</p>
9874
9875 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
9876 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
9877 busy:</p>
9878
9879 <p><blockquote><pre>
9880 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9881   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9882 Using 8 upload threads.
9883 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
9884 #
9885 </pre></blockquote></p>
9886
9887 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
9888 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
9889 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
9890 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
9891 s3qlctrl:
9892
9893 <p><blockquote><pre>
9894 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
9895 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
9896 #
9897 </pre></blockquote></p>
9898
9899 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
9900 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
9901 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
9902 a report:</p>
9903
9904 <p><blockquote><pre>
9905 # s3qlstat /s3ql
9906 Directory entries:    9141
9907 Inodes:               9143
9908 Data blocks:          8851
9909 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
9910 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
9911 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
9912 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
9913 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
9914 #
9915 </pre></blockquote></p>
9916
9917 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
9918 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
9919 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
9920 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
9921 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
9922 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
9923 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
9924 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
9925 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
9926 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
9927 best.</p>
9928
9929 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
9930 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
9931 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
9932 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
9933 poster is titled
9934 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
9935 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
9936 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
9937 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
9938 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
9939
9940 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
9941 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
9942 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
9943 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
9944 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
9945 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
9946 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
9947 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
9948
9949 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
9950 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
9951 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
9952 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
9953 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
9954 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
9955 only read from it.</p>
9956
9957 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9958 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9959 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9960
9961       </div>
9962       <div class="tags">
9963
9964
9965         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9966
9967
9968       </div>
9969     </div>
9970     <div class="padding"></div>
9971
9972     <div class="entry">
9973       <div class="title">
9974         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
9975       </div>
9976       <div class="date">
9977         14th March 2014
9978       </div>
9979       <div class="body">
9980         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
9981 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
9982 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
9983 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
9984 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
9985 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
9986 release (0.2).</p>
9987
9988 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
9989 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
9990 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
9991 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
9992 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
9993 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
9994 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
9995 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
9996 and build using
9997 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
9998 with a user with sudo access to become root:
9999
10000 <pre>
10001 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
10002   freedom-maker
10003 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
10004   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
10005   u-boot-tools
10006 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
10007 </pre>
10008
10009 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
10010 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
10011 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
10012 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
10013 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
10014 kpartx call.</p>
10015
10016 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
10017 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
10018 the preseed values:</p>
10019
10020 <pre>
10021 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
10022 </pre>
10023
10024 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
10025 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
10026 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
10027 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
10028 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
10029 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
10030
10031 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
10032 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
10033 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
10034 irc.debian.org)</a> and
10035 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10036 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
10037
10038       </div>
10039       <div class="tags">
10040
10041
10042         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10043
10044
10045       </div>
10046     </div>
10047     <div class="padding"></div>
10048
10049     <div class="entry">
10050       <div class="title">
10051         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
10052       </div>
10053       <div class="date">
10054         22nd February 2014
10055       </div>
10056       <div class="body">
10057         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
10058 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
10059 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
10060 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
10061 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
10062 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
10063 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
10064 proper home since then.</p>
10065
10066 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
10067 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
10068 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
10069 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
10070 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
10071
10072 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
10073 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
10074 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
10075 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
10076 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
10077 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
10078 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
10079 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
10080 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
10081
10082       </div>
10083       <div class="tags">
10084
10085
10086         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10087
10088
10089       </div>
10090     </div>
10091     <div class="padding"></div>
10092
10093     <div class="entry">
10094       <div class="title">
10095         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
10096       </div>
10097       <div class="date">
10098          3rd February 2014
10099       </div>
10100       <div class="body">
10101         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
10102 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
10103 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
10104 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
10105 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
10106 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
10107 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
10108 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
10109 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
10110
10111 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
10112 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
10113 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
10114 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
10115 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
10116 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
10117
10118 <p><blockquote><pre>
10119 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
10120 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
10121 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
10122 dhclient /dev/eth0
10123 </pre></blockquote></p>
10124
10125 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
10126 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
10127 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
10128
10129 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
10130 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
10131 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
10132 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
10133 side.</p>
10134
10135 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
10136 stuff:</p>
10137
10138 <p><blockquote><pre>
10139 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
10140 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
10141 EOF
10142 apt-get update
10143 apt-get dist-upgrade
10144 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
10145     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
10146 update-alternatives --config runsystem
10147 </pre></blockquote></p>
10148
10149 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
10150 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
10151 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
10152 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
10153 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
10154 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
10155 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
10156 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
10157 ssh instead.
10158
10159 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
10160 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
10161 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
10162 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
10163 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
10164 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
10165
10166 <p><blockquote><pre>
10167 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
10168 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
10169 EOF
10170 </pre></blockquote></p>
10171
10172 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
10173 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
10174 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
10175 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
10176
10177 <p><blockquote><pre>
10178 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
10179 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
10180 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
10181 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
10182 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
10183 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
10184 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
10185 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
10186 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
10187 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
10188 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
10189 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
10190 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
10191 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
10192 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
10193 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
10194 #
10195 </pre></blockquote></p>
10196
10197 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
10198 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
10199 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
10200 command line stuff.<p>
10201
10202       </div>
10203       <div class="tags">
10204
10205
10206         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10207
10208
10209       </div>
10210     </div>
10211     <div class="padding"></div>
10212
10213     <div class="entry">
10214       <div class="title">
10215         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
10216       </div>
10217       <div class="date">
10218         14th January 2014
10219       </div>
10220       <div class="body">
10221         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
10222 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
10223 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
10224 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
10225 the source.  The company behind it provide
10226 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
10227 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
10228 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
10229 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
10230 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
10231 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
10232 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
10233 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
10234 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
10235 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
10236 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
10237 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
10238 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
10239 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
10240 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
10241 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
10242 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
10243 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
10244 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
10245
10246 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
10247
10248 <ul>
10249
10250   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
10251   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
10252   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
10253
10254 </ul>
10255
10256 <p>You can
10257 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
10258 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
10259 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
10260 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
10261 include a test suite check.</p>
10262
10263       </div>
10264       <div class="tags">
10265
10266
10267         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10268
10269
10270       </div>
10271     </div>
10272     <div class="padding"></div>
10273
10274     <div class="entry">
10275       <div class="title">
10276         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
10277       </div>
10278       <div class="date">
10279         24th November 2013
10280       </div>
10281       <div class="body">
10282         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
10283 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
10284 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
10285 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
10286 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
10287 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
10288 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
10289 is working on.  I checked the
10290 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
10291 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
10292 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
10293 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
10294 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
10295 These are the release notes:</p>
10296
10297 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
10298
10299 <ul>
10300
10301   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
10302    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
10303    up.</li>
10304
10305   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
10306
10307   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
10308    Matthias Klose.</li>
10309
10310   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
10311    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
10312
10313   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
10314    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
10315    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
10316
10317 </ul>
10318
10319 <p>You can
10320 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
10321 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
10322 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
10323 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
10324 include a testsuite check.</p>
10325
10326       </div>
10327       <div class="tags">
10328
10329
10330         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10331
10332
10333       </div>
10334     </div>
10335     <div class="padding"></div>
10336
10337     <div class="entry">
10338       <div class="title">
10339         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
10340       </div>
10341       <div class="date">
10342          2nd November 2013
10343       </div>
10344       <div class="body">
10345         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
10346 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
10347 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
10348 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
10349 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
10350
10351 <p><pre>
10352 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
10353 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
10354 # Provides:          rsyslog
10355 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
10356 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
10357 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
10358 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
10359 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
10360 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
10361 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
10362 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
10363 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
10364 ### END INIT INFO
10365 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
10366 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
10367 </pre></p>
10368
10369 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
10370 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
10371 info/comments.</p>
10372
10373 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
10374 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
10375
10376 <p><pre>
10377 #!/bin/sh
10378
10379 # Define LSB log_* functions.
10380 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
10381 # and status_of_proc is working.
10382 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
10383
10384 #
10385 # Function that starts the daemon/service
10386
10387 #
10388 do_start()
10389 {
10390         # Return
10391         #   0 if daemon has been started
10392         #   1 if daemon was already running
10393         #   2 if daemon could not be started
10394         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
10395                 || return 1
10396         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
10397                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
10398                 || return 2
10399         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
10400         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
10401         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
10402 }
10403
10404 #
10405 # Function that stops the daemon/service
10406 #
10407 do_stop()
10408 {
10409         # Return
10410         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
10411         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
10412         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
10413         #   other if a failure occurred
10414         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
10415         RETVAL="$?"
10416         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
10417         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
10418         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
10419         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
10420         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
10421         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
10422         # sleep for some time.
10423         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
10424         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
10425         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
10426         rm -f $PIDFILE
10427         return "$RETVAL"
10428 }
10429
10430 #
10431 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
10432 #
10433 do_reload() {
10434         #
10435         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
10436         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
10437         # then implement that here.
10438         #
10439         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
10440         return 0
10441 }
10442
10443 SCRIPTNAME=$1
10444 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
10445 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
10446 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
10447     script="$1"
10448     shift
10449     . $script
10450 else
10451     exit 0
10452 fi
10453
10454 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
10455 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
10456
10457 # Exit if the package is not installed
10458 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
10459
10460 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
10461 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
10462
10463 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
10464 . /lib/init/vars.sh
10465
10466 case "$1" in
10467   start)
10468         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
10469         do_start
10470         case "$?" in
10471                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
10472                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
10473         esac
10474         ;;
10475   stop)
10476         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
10477         do_stop
10478         case "$?" in
10479                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
10480                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
10481         esac
10482         ;;
10483   status)
10484         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
10485         ;;
10486   #reload|force-reload)
10487         #
10488         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
10489         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
10490         #
10491         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
10492         #do_reload
10493         #log_end_msg $?
10494         #;;
10495   restart|force-reload)
10496         #
10497         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
10498         # 'force-reload' alias
10499         #
10500         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
10501         do_stop
10502         case "$?" in
10503           0|1)
10504                 do_start
10505                 case "$?" in
10506                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
10507                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
10508                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
10509                 esac
10510                 ;;
10511           *)
10512                 # Failed to stop
10513                 log_end_msg 1
10514                 ;;
10515         esac
10516         ;;
10517   *)
10518         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
10519         exit 3
10520         ;;
10521 esac
10522
10523 :
10524 </pre></p>
10525
10526 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
10527 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
10528 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
10529 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
10530
10531 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
10532 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
10533 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
10534 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
10535 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
10536
10537       </div>
10538       <div class="tags">
10539
10540
10541         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10542
10543
10544       </div>
10545     </div>
10546     <div class="padding"></div>
10547
10548     <div class="entry">
10549       <div class="title">
10550         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
10551       </div>
10552       <div class="date">
10553          1st November 2013
10554       </div>
10555       <div class="body">
10556         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
10557 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
10558 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
10559 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
10560 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
10561 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
10562 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
10563 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
10564 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
10565 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
10566 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
10567 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
10568
10569 <p>The source is now available from
10570 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
10571
10572       </div>
10573       <div class="tags">
10574
10575
10576         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10577
10578
10579       </div>
10580     </div>
10581     <div class="padding"></div>
10582
10583     <div class="entry">
10584       <div class="title">
10585         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
10586       </div>
10587       <div class="date">
10588         27th October 2013
10589       </div>
10590       <div class="body">
10591         <p>The
10592 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
10593 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
10594 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
10595 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
10596 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
10597 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
10598 of a plan to simplify the build system for
10599 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
10600 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
10601 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
10602 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
10603 Raspberry Pi.</p>
10604
10605 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
10606 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
10607 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
10608 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
10609 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
10610 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
10611 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
10612 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
10613 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
10614 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
10615 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
10616 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
10617 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
10618 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
10619 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
10620 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
10621 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
10622 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
10623 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
10624 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
10625 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
10626 available from
10627 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
10628 upstream project page</a>.</p>
10629
10630 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
10631 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
10632 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
10633 list:</p>
10634
10635 <p><pre>
10636 #!/bin/sh
10637 set -e # Exit on first error
10638 rootdir="$1"
10639 cd "$rootdir"
10640 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
10641 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
10642 EOF
10643 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
10644 # install a kernel somewhere too.
10645 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
10646     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
10647 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
10648 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
10649 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
10650 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
10651 </pre></p>
10652
10653 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
10654 to build the image:</p>
10655
10656 <pre>
10657 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
10658     --variant minbase \
10659     --arch armel \
10660     --distribution jessie \
10661     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
10662     --image test.img \
10663     --size 600M \
10664     --bootsize 64M \
10665     --boottype vfat \
10666     --log-level debug \
10667     --verbose \
10668     --no-kernel \
10669     --no-extlinux \
10670     --root-password raspberry \
10671     --hostname raspberrypi \
10672     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
10673     --customize `pwd`/customize \
10674     --package netbase \
10675     --package git-core \
10676     --package binutils \
10677     --package ca-certificates \
10678     --package wget \
10679     --package kmod
10680 </pre></p>
10681
10682 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
10683 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
10684 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
10685 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
10686 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
10687 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
10688 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
10689
10690 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
10691 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
10692 build dependency list.</p>
10693
10694 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
10695 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
10696 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
10697 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
10698
10699       </div>
10700       <div class="tags">
10701
10702
10703         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
10704
10705
10706       </div>
10707     </div>
10708     <div class="padding"></div>
10709
10710     <div class="entry">
10711       <div class="title">
10712         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
10713       </div>
10714       <div class="date">
10715         15th October 2013
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="body">
10718         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
10719 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
10720 these. :)</p>
10721
10722 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
10723 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
10724 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
10725 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
10726 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
10727 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
10728 hope you will to. :)</p>
10729
10730 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
10731 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
10732 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
10733 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
10734 donated.  Are you next?</p>
10735
10736 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
10737 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
10738 statement under the heading
10739 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
10740 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
10741 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
10742 too.</p>
10743
10744       </div>
10745       <div class="tags">
10746
10747
10748         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
10749
10750
10751       </div>
10752     </div>
10753     <div class="padding"></div>
10754
10755     <div class="entry">
10756       <div class="title">
10757         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
10758       </div>
10759       <div class="date">
10760         27th September 2013
10761       </div>
10762       <div class="body">
10763         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
10764 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
10765 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
10766 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
10767
10768 <ul>
10769
10770 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
10771 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
10772
10773 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
10774 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
10775
10776 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
10777 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
10778 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
10779 (Youtube)</li>
10780
10781 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
10782 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
10783
10784 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
10785 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
10786
10787 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
10788 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
10789 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
10790
10791 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
10792 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
10793 (Youtube)</li>
10794
10795 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
10796 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
10797
10798 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
10799 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
10800
10801 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
10802 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
10803 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
10804
10805 </ul>
10806
10807 <p>A larger list is available from
10808 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
10809 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
10810
10811 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
10812 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
10813 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
10814 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
10815 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
10816 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
10817 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
10818 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
10819 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
10820 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10821 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
10822
10823       </div>
10824       <div class="tags">
10825
10826
10827         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10828
10829
10830       </div>
10831     </div>
10832     <div class="padding"></div>
10833
10834     <div class="entry">
10835       <div class="title">
10836         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
10837       </div>
10838       <div class="date">
10839         10th September 2013
10840       </div>
10841       <div class="body">
10842         <p>I was introduced to the
10843 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
10844 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
10845 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
10846 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
10847 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
10848 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
10849 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
10850 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
10851
10852 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
10853 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
10854 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
10855 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
10856 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
10857
10858 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
10859 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
10860 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
10861 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
10862 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
10863 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
10864 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
10865 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
10866 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
10867 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
10868 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
10869 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
10870 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
10871 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
10872 missing in Debian).</p>
10873
10874 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
10875 scripts
10876 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
10877 and a administrative web interface
10878 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
10879 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
10880 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
10881 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
10882 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
10883 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
10884 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
10885 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
10886 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
10887 this is really working yet, see
10888 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
10889 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
10890 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
10891 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
10892 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
10893 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
10894 with lots of half baked features.</p>
10895
10896 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
10897 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
10898 at.</p>
10899
10900 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
10901
10902 <ol>
10903
10904 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
10905 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
10906 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
10907 to the Debian installer:<p>
10908 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
10909
10910 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
10911 install on.</li>
10912
10913 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
10914 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
10915
10916 </ol>
10917
10918 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
10919
10920 <ol>
10921
10922 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
10923 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
10924 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
10925 <pre>
10926 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
10927 </pre></li>
10928 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
10929 <pre>
10930 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
10931    apt-key add -
10932 apt-get update
10933 apt-get install freedombox-setup
10934 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
10935 </pre></li>
10936 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
10937
10938 </ol>
10939
10940 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
10941 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
10942 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
10943 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
10944 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
10945
10946 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
10947 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
10948 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
10949 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
10950
10951 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
10952 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
10953 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
10954 irc.debian.org and the
10955 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
10956 mailing list</a>.</p>
10957
10958 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
10959 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
10960 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
10961 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
10962 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
10963 default password is 'secret'.</p>
10964
10965       </div>
10966       <div class="tags">
10967
10968
10969         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10970
10971
10972       </div>
10973     </div>
10974     <div class="padding"></div>
10975
10976     <div class="entry">
10977       <div class="title">
10978         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
10979       </div>
10980       <div class="date">
10981         18th August 2013
10982       </div>
10983       <div class="body">
10984         <p>Earlier, I reported about
10985 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
10986 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
10987 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
10988 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
10989 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
10990 currently on the disk.</p>
10991
10992 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
10993 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
10994 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
10995 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
10996 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
10997 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
10998 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
10999 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
11000 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
11001 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
11002 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
11003 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
11004 the broken disks.</p>
11005
11006       </div>
11007       <div class="tags">
11008
11009
11010         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11011
11012
11013       </div>
11014     </div>
11015     <div class="padding"></div>
11016
11017     <div class="entry">
11018       <div class="title">
11019         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11020       </div>
11021       <div class="date">
11022         17th July 2013
11023       </div>
11024       <div class="body">
11025         <p>Today I switched to
11026 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
11027 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
11028 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
11029 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
11030 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
11031 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
11032 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
11033 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
11034 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
11035 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
11036 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
11037 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
11038 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
11039 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
11040 station from now on.</p>
11041
11042 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
11043 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
11044 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
11045 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
11046 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
11047 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
11048 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
11049 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
11050 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
11051 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
11052 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
11053 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
11054
11055 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
11056 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
11057 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
11058 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
11059 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
11060 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
11061 parameters are tuned:</p>
11062
11063 <ul>
11064
11065 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
11066     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
11067
11068 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
11069     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
11070     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
11071
11072 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
11073     systems.</li>
11074
11075 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
11076     /etc/fstab.</li>
11077
11078 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
11079
11080 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
11081     cron.daily).</li>
11082
11083 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
11084     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
11085
11086 </ul>
11087
11088 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
11089 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
11090 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
11091 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
11092 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
11093 from getting the data on the disk (see
11094 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
11095 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
11096 right thing to do.</p>
11097
11098 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
11099 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
11100 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
11101
11102 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
11103 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
11104 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
11105 instead of during my work.</p>
11106
11107 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
11108 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
11109
11110 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
11111 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
11112 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
11113
11114 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
11115 there.</p>
11116
11117 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
11118 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
11119 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
11120 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
11121 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
11122 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
11123 back.</p>
11124
11125       </div>
11126       <div class="tags">
11127
11128
11129         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11130
11131
11132       </div>
11133     </div>
11134     <div class="padding"></div>
11135
11136     <div class="entry">
11137       <div class="title">
11138         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11139       </div>
11140       <div class="date">
11141         10th July 2013
11142       </div>
11143       <div class="body">
11144         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
11145 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
11146 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
11147 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
11148 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
11149 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
11150 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
11151 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
11152
11153 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
11154 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
11155 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
11156 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
11157 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
11158 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
11159 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
11160 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
11161 lock up when I download a new
11162 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
11163 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
11164 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
11165
11166 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11167 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
11168 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
11169 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
11170 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
11171 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
11172
11173 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11174 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
11175 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
11176 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
11177 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
11178 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
11179
11180 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
11181 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
11182 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
11183 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
11184 exist).</p>
11185
11186       </div>
11187       <div class="tags">
11188
11189
11190         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11191
11192
11193       </div>
11194     </div>
11195     <div class="padding"></div>
11196
11197     <div class="entry">
11198       <div class="title">
11199         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11200       </div>
11201       <div class="date">
11202          9th July 2013
11203       </div>
11204       <div class="body">
11205         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
11206 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
11207 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
11208 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
11209 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11210 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
11211 Bitraf</a>.</p>
11212
11213 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
11214 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
11215 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
11216 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
11217 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
11218
11219       </div>
11220       <div class="tags">
11221
11222
11223         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11224
11225
11226       </div>
11227     </div>
11228     <div class="padding"></div>
11229
11230     <div class="entry">
11231       <div class="title">
11232         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
11233       </div>
11234       <div class="date">
11235          5th July 2013
11236       </div>
11237       <div class="body">
11238         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
11239 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
11240 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
11241 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
11242 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
11243 ended up picking a
11244 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
11245 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
11246 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
11247 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
11248 on that below.</p>
11249
11250 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11251 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11252 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
11253 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
11254 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11255 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
11256 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
11257 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
11258 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
11259
11260 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
11261 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
11262 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
11263 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
11264 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
11265 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
11266 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
11267
11268 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
11269 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
11270
11271 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
11272 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
11273 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
11274 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
11275 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
11276 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
11277 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
11278 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
11279 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
11280 kernel developers as
11281 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
11282 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
11283 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
11284 Lenovo forums, both for
11285 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
11286 2012-11-10</a> and for
11287 <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
11288 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
11289 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
11290 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
11291 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
11292 There is even a
11293 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
11294 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
11295 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
11296
11297 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
11298 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
11299 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
11300 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
11301 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
11302 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
11303 fixed. :)</p>
11304
11305       </div>
11306       <div class="tags">
11307
11308
11309         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11310
11311
11312       </div>
11313     </div>
11314     <div class="padding"></div>
11315
11316     <div class="entry">
11317       <div class="title">
11318         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
11319       </div>
11320       <div class="date">
11321          4th July 2013
11322       </div>
11323       <div class="body">
11324         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
11325 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
11326 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
11327 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
11328 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
11329 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
11330 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
11331 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
11332 with an expencive door stop.</p>
11333
11334 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11335 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11336 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
11337 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
11338 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11339 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
11340 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
11341
11342 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
11343 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
11344 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
11345 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
11346 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
11347 new laptop now. :)</p>
11348
11349 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
11350
11351       </div>
11352       <div class="tags">
11353
11354
11355         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11356
11357
11358       </div>
11359     </div>
11360     <div class="padding"></div>
11361
11362     <div class="entry">
11363       <div class="title">
11364         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11365       </div>
11366       <div class="date">
11367         25th June 2013
11368       </div>
11369       <div class="body">
11370         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
11371 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
11372 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
11373 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
11374 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
11375 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
11376 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
11377 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
11378 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
11379 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
11380 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
11381
11382 <p><pre>
11383 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11384 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
11385 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
11386 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
11387 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
11388 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
11389 firmware-ipw2x00
11390 firmware-ipw2x00
11391 Preconfiguring packages ...
11392 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
11393 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
11394 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
11395 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
11396 #
11397 </pre></p>
11398
11399 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
11400 printed instead:</p>
11401
11402 <p><pre>
11403 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11404 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
11405 #
11406 </pre></p>
11407
11408 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
11409 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
11410
11411 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
11412 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
11413 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
11414 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
11415 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
11416 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
11417 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
11418 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
11419 machine.</p>
11420
11421 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
11422 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
11423 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
11424 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
11425 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
11426 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
11427
11428       </div>
11429       <div class="tags">
11430
11431
11432         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11433
11434
11435       </div>
11436     </div>
11437     <div class="padding"></div>
11438
11439     <div class="entry">
11440       <div class="title">
11441         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11442       </div>
11443       <div class="date">
11444         11th June 2013
11445       </div>
11446       <div class="body">
11447         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
11448 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
11449 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
11450 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
11451 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
11452 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
11453 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
11454 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
11455 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
11456 i915 driver used by the
11457 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
11458 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
11459
11460 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
11461 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
11462 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
11463 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
11464 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
11465
11466 <pre>
11467 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
11468 update-initramfs -u -k all
11469 </pre>
11470
11471 <p>Since March 2012 there is
11472 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
11473 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
11474 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
11475 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
11476 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
11477 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
11478 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
11479 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
11480 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
11481 number.</p>
11482
11483 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
11484 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
11485
11486 <p><pre>
11487 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
11488     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
11489     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
11490  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
11491  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
11492     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
11493  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
11494     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
11495  Latency: 0
11496  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
11497  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
11498  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
11499  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
11500  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
11501  Capabilities: <access denied>
11502  Kernel driver in use: i915
11503 </pre></p>
11504
11505 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
11506
11507 <p><pre>
11508 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
11509        ...
11510         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
11511         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
11512        ...
11513 }
11514 </pre></p>
11515
11516 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
11517 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
11518 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
11519 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
11520 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
11521 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
11522 yet shown up in
11523 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
11524 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
11525 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
11526 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
11527 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
11528 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
11529
11530 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
11531 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
11532 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
11533 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
11534 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
11535 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
11536 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
11537 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
11538 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
11539 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
11540 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
11541 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
11542
11543 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
11544 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
11545 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
11546 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
11547 backlight.</p>
11548
11549       </div>
11550       <div class="tags">
11551
11552
11553         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11554
11555
11556       </div>
11557     </div>
11558     <div class="padding"></div>
11559
11560     <div class="entry">
11561       <div class="title">
11562         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11563       </div>
11564       <div class="date">
11565         27th May 2013
11566       </div>
11567       <div class="body">
11568         <p>Two days ago, I asked
11569 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
11570 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
11571 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
11572 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
11573 and Windows 8.</p>
11574
11575 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
11576 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
11577 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
11578 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
11579 enough to tell.</p>
11580
11581 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
11582 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
11583 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
11584 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
11585 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
11586 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
11587 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
11588 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
11589 to follow.</p>
11590
11591 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
11592 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
11593 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
11594 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
11595 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
11596 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
11597 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
11598 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
11599
11600 <p>I've updated the
11601 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
11602 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
11603 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
11604 machine.</p>
11605
11606 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
11607 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
11608
11609       </div>
11610       <div class="tags">
11611
11612
11613         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11614
11615
11616       </div>
11617     </div>
11618     <div class="padding"></div>
11619
11620     <div class="entry">
11621       <div class="title">
11622         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11623       </div>
11624       <div class="date">
11625         25th May 2013
11626       </div>
11627       <div class="body">
11628         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
11629 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
11630 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
11631 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
11632 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
11633 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
11634
11635 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
11636 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
11637 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
11638 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
11639 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
11640 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
11641 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
11642 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
11643 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
11644 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
11645
11646 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
11647 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
11648 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
11649 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
11650 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
11651 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
11652
11653 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
11654 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
11655 on new Laptops?</p>
11656
11657       </div>
11658       <div class="tags">
11659
11660
11661         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11662
11663
11664       </div>
11665     </div>
11666     <div class="padding"></div>
11667
11668     <div class="entry">
11669       <div class="title">
11670         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11671       </div>
11672       <div class="date">
11673         17th May 2013
11674       </div>
11675       <div class="body">
11676         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
11677 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
11678 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
11679 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
11680 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
11681 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
11682 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
11683 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
11684 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
11685 donate some money</a>.
11686
11687 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
11688 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
11689 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
11690 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
11691 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
11692
11693 <p>The script,
11694 <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/>
11695 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
11696 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
11697 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
11698
11699 <ol>
11700
11701 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
11702 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
11703 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
11704     our configuration.</li>
11705 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
11706     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
11707     according to the profile specified in the config above,
11708     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
11709 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
11710     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
11711 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
11712
11713 </ol>
11714
11715 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
11716 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
11717 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
11718 the needed packages.</p>
11719
11720 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
11721 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
11722 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
11723 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
11724 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
11725 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
11726
11727 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
11728 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
11729 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
11730
11731 <p><pre>
11732 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
11733 DESKTOP="lxde"
11734 </pre></p>
11735
11736 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
11737 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
11738 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
11739 boot.</p>
11740
11741       </div>
11742       <div class="tags">
11743
11744
11745         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11746
11747
11748       </div>
11749     </div>
11750     <div class="padding"></div>
11751
11752     <div class="entry">
11753       <div class="title">
11754         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
11755       </div>
11756       <div class="date">
11757         11th May 2013
11758       </div>
11759       <div class="body">
11760         <P>In January,
11761 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
11762 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
11763 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
11764 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
11765 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
11766 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
11767 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
11768 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
11769 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
11770 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
11771 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
11772 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
11773
11774 <p><table>
11775 <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>
11776 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
11777 <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>
11778 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
11779 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
11780 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
11781 <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>
11782 <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>
11783 <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>
11784 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
11785 </table></p>
11786
11787 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
11788 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
11789 available in experimental.</p>
11790
11791 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
11792 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
11793 for LEGO designers.</p>
11794
11795       </div>
11796       <div class="tags">
11797
11798
11799         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11800
11801
11802       </div>
11803     </div>
11804     <div class="padding"></div>
11805
11806     <div class="entry">
11807       <div class="title">
11808         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
11809       </div>
11810       <div class="date">
11811          5th May 2013
11812       </div>
11813       <div class="body">
11814         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
11815 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
11816 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
11817 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
11818 soon.</p>
11819
11820 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
11821 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
11822 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
11823 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
11824 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
11825 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
11826 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
11827 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
11828 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
11829 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
11830 Edu.</a>
11831
11832 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
11833 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
11834 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
11835 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
11836 follow.<p>
11837
11838       </div>
11839       <div class="tags">
11840
11841
11842         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11843
11844
11845       </div>
11846     </div>
11847     <div class="padding"></div>
11848
11849     <div class="entry">
11850       <div class="title">
11851         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
11852       </div>
11853       <div class="date">
11854          3rd April 2013
11855       </div>
11856       <div class="body">
11857         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
11858 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
11859 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
11860 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
11861
11862 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
11863 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
11864 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
11865 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
11866 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
11867 BTS. :)</p>
11868
11869       </div>
11870       <div class="tags">
11871
11872
11873         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11874
11875
11876       </div>
11877     </div>
11878     <div class="padding"></div>
11879
11880     <div class="entry">
11881       <div class="title">
11882         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
11883       </div>
11884       <div class="date">
11885          2nd February 2013
11886       </div>
11887       <div class="body">
11888         <p>My
11889 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
11890 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
11891 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
11892 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
11893 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
11894 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
11895 version too.</p>
11896
11897 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
11898 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
11899 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
11900 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
11901 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
11902 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
11903 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
11904 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
11905
11906 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
11907 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
11908 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
11909 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
11910 it. :)</p>
11911
11912 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11913 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11914 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11915
11916       </div>
11917       <div class="tags">
11918
11919
11920         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11921
11922
11923       </div>
11924     </div>
11925     <div class="padding"></div>
11926
11927     <div class="entry">
11928       <div class="title">
11929         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
11930       </div>
11931       <div class="date">
11932         22nd January 2013
11933       </div>
11934       <div class="body">
11935         <p>Yesterday, I
11936 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
11937 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
11938 pluggable hardware devices, which I
11939 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
11940 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
11941 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
11942 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
11943 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
11944 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
11945 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
11946 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
11947 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
11948 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
11949
11950 <pre>
11951 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
11952 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
11953 </pre>
11954
11955 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
11956 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
11957 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
11958 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
11959
11960 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
11961 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
11962 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
11963 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
11964 word.</p>
11965
11966 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
11967 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
11968 process.</p>
11969
11970 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
11971 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
11972
11973       </div>
11974       <div class="tags">
11975
11976
11977         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11978
11979
11980       </div>
11981     </div>
11982     <div class="padding"></div>
11983
11984     <div class="entry">
11985       <div class="title">
11986         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
11987       </div>
11988       <div class="date">
11989         21st January 2013
11990       </div>
11991       <div class="body">
11992         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
11993 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
11994 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
11995 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
11996 it, fetch the
11997 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
11998 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
11999 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
12000 autostart script.</p>
12001
12002 <p>The design is simple:</p>
12003
12004 <ul>
12005
12006 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
12007 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
12008
12009 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
12010 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
12011 initially did.</li>
12012
12013 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
12014 the APT database, a database
12015 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
12016 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
12017
12018 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
12019 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
12020 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
12021 package or packages.</li>
12022
12023 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
12024 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
12025
12026 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
12027 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
12028
12029 </ul>
12030
12031 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
12032 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
12033 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
12034 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
12035
12036 <p><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
12037 <br><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
12038 <br><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
12039 <br><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
12040 <br><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
12041
12042 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
12043 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
12044 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
12045 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
12046 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
12047 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
12048 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
12049 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
12050
12051 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
12052 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
12053 '<tt>svn checkout
12054 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
12055 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
12056 devscripts package.</p>
12057
12058 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
12059 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
12060 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
12061 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
12062 instructions</a> for details.</p>
12063
12064       </div>
12065       <div class="tags">
12066
12067
12068         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
12069
12070
12071       </div>
12072     </div>
12073     <div class="padding"></div>
12074
12075     <div class="entry">
12076       <div class="title">
12077         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
12078       </div>
12079       <div class="date">
12080         19th January 2013
12081       </div>
12082       <div class="body">
12083         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
12084 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
12085 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
12086 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
12087 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
12088 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
12089 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
12090 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
12091 not a durable solution.
12092
12093 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
12094 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
12095
12096 <ul>
12097
12098 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
12099   than A4).</li>
12100 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
12101 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
12102 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
12103 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
12104 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
12105 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
12106 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
12107 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
12108 size).</li>
12109 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
12110   X.org packages.</li>
12111 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
12112   the time).
12113
12114 </ul>
12115
12116 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
12117 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
12118 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
12119 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
12120 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
12121 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
12122 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
12123 still be useful.</p>
12124
12125 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
12126 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
12127 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
12128 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
12129 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
12130 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
12131
12132       </div>
12133       <div class="tags">
12134
12135
12136         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12137
12138
12139       </div>
12140     </div>
12141     <div class="padding"></div>
12142
12143     <div class="entry">
12144       <div class="title">
12145         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
12146       </div>
12147       <div class="date">
12148         18th January 2013
12149       </div>
12150       <div class="body">
12151         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
12152 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
12153 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
12154 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
12155 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
12156 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
12157 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
12158
12159 <pre>
12160 #!/usr/bin/python
12161 import sys
12162 import apt
12163 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
12164     cache = apt.Cache()
12165     cache.open(None)
12166     thepkgs = []
12167     for pkg in cache:
12168         version = pkg.candidate
12169         if version is None:
12170             version = pkg.installed
12171         if version is None:
12172             continue
12173         record = version.record
12174         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
12175             continue
12176         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
12177         for t in mime_types:
12178             t = t.rstrip().strip()
12179             if t == mimetype:
12180                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
12181     return thepkgs
12182 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
12183 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
12184     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
12185 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
12186 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
12187     print "  %s" %pkg
12188 </pre>
12189
12190 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
12191
12192 <pre>
12193 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
12194 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
12195   gecko-mediaplayer
12196 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
12197 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
12198   browser-plugin-gnash
12199 %
12200 </pre>
12201
12202 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
12203 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
12204 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
12205 anyone working on adding it?</p>
12206
12207 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
12208 request for icweasel support for this feature is
12209 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
12210 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
12211 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
12212 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
12213
12214       </div>
12215       <div class="tags">
12216
12217
12218         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12219
12220
12221       </div>
12222     </div>
12223     <div class="padding"></div>
12224
12225     <div class="entry">
12226       <div class="title">
12227         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
12228       </div>
12229       <div class="date">
12230         16th January 2013
12231       </div>
12232       <div class="body">
12233         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
12234 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
12235 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
12236 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
12237 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
12238 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
12239 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
12240 downloaded by the browser.</p>
12241
12242 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
12243 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
12244 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
12245 can be found on the
12246 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
12247 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
12248 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
12249 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
12250 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
12251
12252 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
12253
12254 <pre>
12255   count MIME type
12256   ----- -----------------------
12257      32 text/plain
12258      30 audio/mpeg
12259      29 image/png
12260      28 image/jpeg
12261      27 application/ogg
12262      26 audio/x-mp3
12263      25 image/tiff
12264      25 image/gif
12265      22 image/bmp
12266      22 audio/x-wav
12267      20 audio/x-flac
12268      19 audio/x-mpegurl
12269      18 video/x-ms-asf
12270      18 audio/x-musepack
12271      18 audio/x-mpeg
12272      18 application/x-ogg
12273      17 video/mpeg
12274      17 audio/x-scpls
12275      17 audio/ogg
12276      16 video/x-ms-wmv
12277 </pre>
12278
12279 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
12280
12281 <pre>
12282   count MIME type
12283   ----- -----------------------
12284      33 text/plain
12285      32 image/png
12286      32 image/jpeg
12287      29 audio/mpeg
12288      27 image/gif
12289      26 image/tiff
12290      26 application/ogg
12291      25 audio/x-mp3
12292      22 image/bmp
12293      21 audio/x-wav
12294      19 audio/x-mpegurl
12295      19 audio/x-mpeg
12296      18 video/mpeg
12297      18 audio/x-scpls
12298      18 audio/x-flac
12299      18 application/x-ogg
12300      17 video/x-ms-asf
12301      17 text/html
12302      17 audio/x-musepack
12303      16 image/x-xbitmap
12304 </pre>
12305
12306 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
12307
12308 <pre>
12309   count MIME type
12310   ----- -----------------------
12311      31 text/plain
12312      31 image/png
12313      31 image/jpeg
12314      29 audio/mpeg
12315      28 application/ogg
12316      27 image/gif
12317      26 image/tiff
12318      26 audio/x-mp3
12319      23 audio/x-wav
12320      22 image/bmp
12321      21 audio/x-flac
12322      20 audio/x-mpegurl
12323      19 audio/x-mpeg
12324      18 video/x-ms-asf
12325      18 video/mpeg
12326      18 audio/x-scpls
12327      18 application/x-ogg
12328      17 audio/x-musepack
12329      16 video/x-ms-wmv
12330      16 video/x-msvideo
12331 </pre>
12332
12333 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
12334 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
12335 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
12336 issues.</p>
12337
12338 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
12339 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
12340
12341       </div>
12342       <div class="tags">
12343
12344
12345         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12346
12347
12348       </div>
12349     </div>
12350     <div class="padding"></div>
12351
12352     <div class="entry">
12353       <div class="title">
12354         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
12355       </div>
12356       <div class="date">
12357         15th January 2013
12358       </div>
12359       <div class="body">
12360         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
12361 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
12362 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
12363 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
12364 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
12365 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
12366 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
12367 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
12368 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
12369 packages.</p>
12370
12371 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
12372 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
12373 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
12374 modalias.</p>
12375
12376 <p><blockquote>
12377 Package: package-name
12378 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
12379 </blockquote></p>
12380
12381 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
12382 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
12383
12384 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
12385 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
12386
12387 <p><blockquote>
12388 Package: cheese
12389 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
12390 </blockquote></p>
12391
12392 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
12393 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
12394
12395 <p><blockquote>
12396 Package: pcmciautils
12397 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
12398 </blockquote></p>
12399
12400 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
12401 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
12402
12403 <p><blockquote>
12404 Package: colorhug-client
12405 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
12406 </blockquote></p>
12407
12408 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
12409 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
12410 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
12411
12412 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
12413 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
12414 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
12415 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
12416 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
12417 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
12418 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
12419 Raring.</p>
12420
12421 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
12422 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
12423 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
12424 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
12425 try the
12426 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
12427 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
12428 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
12429 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
12430
12431 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
12432 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
12433
12434 <p><blockquote>
12435 % ./hw-support-lookup
12436 <br>yubikey-personalization
12437 <br>%
12438 </blockquote></p>
12439
12440 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
12441 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
12442
12443 <p><blockquote>
12444 % ./hw-support-lookup
12445 <br>pcmciautils
12446 <br>%
12447 </blockquote></p>
12448
12449 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
12450 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
12451 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
12452
12453 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
12454 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
12455 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
12456 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
12457 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
12458 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
12459 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
12460 see if it work.</p>
12461
12462 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
12463 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
12464 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
12465 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
12466
12467       </div>
12468       <div class="tags">
12469
12470
12471         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
12472
12473
12474       </div>
12475     </div>
12476     <div class="padding"></div>
12477
12478     <div class="entry">
12479       <div class="title">
12480         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
12481       </div>
12482       <div class="date">
12483         14th January 2013
12484       </div>
12485       <div class="body">
12486         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
12487 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
12488 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
12489 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
12490 in
12491 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
12492 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
12493
12494 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
12495
12496 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
12497 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
12498 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
12499 &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;,
12500 &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
12501 &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;.
12502
12503 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
12504 this shell script:</p>
12505
12506 <pre>
12507 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
12508 </pre>
12509
12510 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
12511 using modinfo:</p>
12512
12513 <pre>
12514 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
12515 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
12516 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
12517 %
12518 </pre>
12519
12520 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
12521
12522 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
12523 Bridge memory controller:</p>
12524
12525 <p><blockquote>
12526 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
12527 </blockquote></p>
12528
12529 <p>This represent these values:</p>
12530
12531 <pre>
12532  v   00008086  (vendor)
12533  d   00002770  (device)
12534  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
12535  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
12536  bc  06        (bus class)
12537  sc  00        (bus subclass)
12538  i   00        (interface)
12539 </pre>
12540
12541 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
12542 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
12543 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
12544 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
12545
12546 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
12547 means.</p>
12548
12549 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
12550
12551 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
12552 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
12553
12554 <p><blockquote>
12555 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
12556 </blockquote></p>
12557
12558 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
12559
12560 <pre>
12561  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
12562  p    0001  (device product)
12563  d    0206  (bcddevice)
12564  dc     09  (device class)
12565  dsc    00  (device subclass)
12566  dp     00  (device protocol)
12567  ic     09  (interface class)
12568  isc    00  (interface subclass)
12569  ip     00  (interface protocol)
12570 </pre>
12571
12572 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
12573 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
12574 these alias entries show up:</p>
12575
12576 <p><blockquote>
12577 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
12578 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
12579 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
12580 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
12581 </blockquote></p>
12582
12583 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
12584 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
12585 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
12586
12587 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
12588
12589 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
12590 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
12591
12592 <p><blockquote>
12593 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
12594 </blockquote></p>
12595
12596 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
12597
12598 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
12599
12600 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
12601 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
12602 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
12603
12604 <p><blockquote>
12605 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
12606 </blockquote></p>
12607
12608 <p>The values present are</p>
12609
12610 <pre>
12611  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
12612  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
12613  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
12614  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
12615  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
12616  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
12617  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
12618  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
12619  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
12620  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
12621  ct   10             (chassis type)
12622  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
12623 </pre>
12624
12625 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
12626 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
12627
12628 <pre>
12629   3 Desktop
12630   4 Low Profile Desktop
12631   5 Pizza Box
12632   6 Mini Tower
12633   7 Tower
12634   8 Portable
12635   9 Laptop
12636  10 Notebook
12637  11 Hand Held
12638  12 Docking Station
12639  13 All In One
12640  14 Sub Notebook
12641  15 Space-saving
12642  16 Lunch Box
12643  17 Main Server Chassis
12644  18 Expansion Chassis
12645  19 Sub Chassis
12646  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
12647  21 Peripheral Chassis
12648  22 RAID Chassis
12649  23 Rack Mount Chassis
12650  24 Sealed-case PC
12651  25 Multi-system
12652  26 CompactPCI
12653  27 AdvancedTCA
12654  28 Blade
12655  29 Blade Enclosing
12656 </pre>
12657
12658 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
12659 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
12660 claim it is a desktop.</p>
12661
12662 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
12663
12664 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
12665 test machine:</p>
12666
12667 <p><blockquote>
12668 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
12669 </blockquote></p>
12670
12671 <p>The values present are</p>
12672
12673 <pre>
12674   ty  01  (type)
12675   pr  00  (prototype)
12676   id  00  (id)
12677   ex  00  (extra)
12678 </pre>
12679
12680 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
12681 the valid values are.</p>
12682
12683 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
12684
12685 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
12686 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
12687 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
12688 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
12689 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
12690 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
12691 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
12692
12693 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
12694
12695 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
12696 one can use the following shell script:</p>
12697
12698 <pre>
12699   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
12700     echo "$id" ; \
12701     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
12702   done
12703 </pre>
12704
12705 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
12706 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
12707
12708 <pre>
12709   acpi:ACPI0003:
12710     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
12711   acpi:device:
12712   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
12713   acpi:IBM0068:
12714     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
12715     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
12716     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
12717     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
12718   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
12719     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
12720     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
12721     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
12722   [...]
12723 </pre>
12724
12725 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
12726 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
12727 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
12728 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
12729
12730 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
12731 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
12732 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
12733
12734       </div>
12735       <div class="tags">
12736
12737
12738         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
12739
12740
12741       </div>
12742     </div>
12743     <div class="padding"></div>
12744
12745     <div class="entry">
12746       <div class="title">
12747         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
12748       </div>
12749       <div class="date">
12750         10th January 2013
12751       </div>
12752       <div class="body">
12753         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
12754 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
12755 Launcher and updated the Debian package
12756 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
12757 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
12758 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
12759 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
12760 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
12761 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
12762 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
12763 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
12764 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
12765 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
12766 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
12767 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
12768 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
12769 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
12770 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
12771
12772       </div>
12773       <div class="tags">
12774
12775
12776         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
12777
12778
12779       </div>
12780     </div>
12781     <div class="padding"></div>
12782
12783     <div class="entry">
12784       <div class="title">
12785         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
12786       </div>
12787       <div class="date">
12788          9th January 2013
12789       </div>
12790       <div class="body">
12791         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
12792 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
12793 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
12794 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
12795 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
12796 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
12797 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
12798 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
12799 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
12800 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
12801 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
12802
12803 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
12804 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
12805 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
12806 simple:
12807
12808 <ul>
12809
12810 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
12811   starting when a user log in.</li>
12812
12813 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
12814   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
12815
12816 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
12817   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
12818   packages.</li>
12819
12820 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
12821   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
12822
12823 </ul>
12824
12825 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
12826 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
12827 discover database to find packages and
12828 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
12829 packages.</p>
12830
12831 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
12832 draft package is now checked into
12833 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
12834 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
12835 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
12836 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
12837 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
12838 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
12839 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
12840 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
12841 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
12842 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
12843 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
12844 because of the freeze).</p>
12845
12846 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
12847 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
12848 inserted):</p>
12849
12850 <p align="center"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
12851
12852 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
12853 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
12854 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
12855
12856 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
12857 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
12858 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
12859 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
12860 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
12861 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
12862 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
12863
12864 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
12865 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
12866 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
12867 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
12868 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
12869 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
12870 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
12871 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
12872 not be installed?</p>
12873
12874 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
12875 please send me an email. :)</p>
12876
12877       </div>
12878       <div class="tags">
12879
12880
12881         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
12882
12883
12884       </div>
12885     </div>
12886     <div class="padding"></div>
12887
12888     <div class="entry">
12889       <div class="title">
12890         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
12891       </div>
12892       <div class="date">
12893          2nd January 2013
12894       </div>
12895       <div class="body">
12896         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
12897 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
12898 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
12899 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
12900 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
12901 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
12902 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
12903 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
12904 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
12905 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
12906
12907 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
12908 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
12909 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
12910
12911       </div>
12912       <div class="tags">
12913
12914
12915         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
12916
12917
12918       </div>
12919     </div>
12920     <div class="padding"></div>
12921
12922     <div class="entry">
12923       <div class="title">
12924         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
12925       </div>
12926       <div class="date">
12927         25th December 2012
12928       </div>
12929       <div class="body">
12930         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
12931 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
12932
12933 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
12934 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
12935 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
12936 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
12937 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
12938 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
12939 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
12940 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
12941 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
12942 name.</p>
12943
12944 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
12945 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
12946 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
12947
12948 <blockquote><pre>
12949 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
12950 cd bitcoin
12951 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
12952 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
12953 </pre></blockquote>
12954
12955 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
12956 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
12957 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
12958 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
12959 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
12960 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
12961 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
12962 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
12963 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
12964
12965 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
12966 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
12967 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
12968
12969       </div>
12970       <div class="tags">
12971
12972
12973         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12974
12975
12976       </div>
12977     </div>
12978     <div class="padding"></div>
12979
12980     <div class="entry">
12981       <div class="title">
12982         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
12983       </div>
12984       <div class="date">
12985         21st December 2012
12986       </div>
12987       <div class="body">
12988         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
12989 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
12990 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
12991 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
12992 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
12993 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
12994 is now maintained by a
12995 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
12996 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
12997 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
12998 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
12999 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
13000 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
13001 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
13002 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
13003 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
13004 Corallo in a
13005 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
13006 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
13007 Debian package.</p>
13008
13009 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
13010 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
13011 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
13012 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
13013 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
13014 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
13015 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
13016 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
13017 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
13018 new version to unstable.
13019
13020 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
13021 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
13022 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
13023 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
13024 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
13025 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
13026 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
13027 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
13028 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
13029 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
13030 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
13031 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
13032 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
13033 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
13034 have not tested them.</p>
13035
13036 <p>My
13037 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
13038 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
13039 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
13040 years ago, as can be
13041 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
13042 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
13043 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
13044 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
13045 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
13046 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
13047 the same address as last time,
13048 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
13049
13050       </div>
13051       <div class="tags">
13052
13053
13054         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13055
13056
13057       </div>
13058     </div>
13059     <div class="padding"></div>
13060
13061     <div class="entry">
13062       <div class="title">
13063         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13064       </div>
13065       <div class="date">
13066          7th September 2012
13067       </div>
13068       <div class="body">
13069         <p>As I
13070 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
13071 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
13072 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
13073 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
13074 repository for the project</a>.</p>
13075
13076 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
13077 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
13078 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
13079 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
13080
13081 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
13082 PostScript formats at
13083 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
13084 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
13085
13086       </div>
13087       <div class="tags">
13088
13089
13090         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
13091
13092
13093       </div>
13094     </div>
13095     <div class="padding"></div>
13096
13097     <div class="entry">
13098       <div class="title">
13099         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
13100       </div>
13101       <div class="date">
13102         16th August 2012
13103       </div>
13104       <div class="body">
13105         <p>I dag fyller
13106 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
13107 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
13108 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
13109
13110       </div>
13111       <div class="tags">
13112
13113
13114         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
13115
13116
13117       </div>
13118     </div>
13119     <div class="padding"></div>
13120
13121     <div class="entry">
13122       <div class="title">
13123         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13124       </div>
13125       <div class="date">
13126         24th June 2012
13127       </div>
13128       <div class="body">
13129         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13130 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13131 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13132 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13133 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13134 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13135 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13136 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13137 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13138 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13139 missing in my book.</p>
13140
13141 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13142 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13143 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13144 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13145 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13146 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13147 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13148
13149       </div>
13150       <div class="tags">
13151
13152
13153         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
13154
13155
13156       </div>
13157     </div>
13158     <div class="padding"></div>
13159
13160     <div class="entry">
13161       <div class="title">
13162         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
13163       </div>
13164       <div class="date">
13165         21st November 2011
13166       </div>
13167       <div class="body">
13168         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
13169 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
13170 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
13171 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
13172 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
13173 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
13174 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
13175 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
13176 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
13177 the tools to do so.</p>
13178
13179 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
13180 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
13181 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
13182 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
13183
13184 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
13185 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
13186 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
13187 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
13188 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
13189 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
13190 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
13191 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
13192
13193 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
13194 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
13195 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
13196
13197 <p><pre>
13198 #!/usr/bin/perl
13199 use strict;
13200 use warnings;
13201 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
13202 BEGIN {
13203     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
13204     my %rhelmodules = (
13205         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
13206         );
13207     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
13208         eval "use $module;";
13209         if ($@) {
13210             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
13211             system("yum install -y $pkg");
13212             eval "use $module;";
13213         }
13214     }
13215 }
13216 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
13217
13218 upgrade_dell();
13219
13220 exit 0;
13221
13222 sub run_firmware_script {
13223     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
13224     unless ($script) {
13225         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
13226         exit 1
13227     }
13228     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
13229
13230     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
13231         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
13232     } else {
13233         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
13234     }
13235 }
13236
13237 sub run_firmware_scripts {
13238     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
13239     # Run firmware packages
13240     for my $dir (@dirs) {
13241         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
13242         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
13243         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
13244             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
13245             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
13246         }
13247         closedir $dh;
13248     }
13249 }
13250
13251 sub download {
13252     my $url = shift;
13253     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
13254     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
13255 }
13256
13257 sub upgrade_dell {
13258     my @dirs;
13259     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13260     chomp $product;
13261
13262     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
13263
13264         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
13265         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
13266
13267         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
13268             CLEANUP => 1
13269             );
13270         chdir($tmpdir);
13271         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
13272         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
13273         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
13274         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
13275         my $fwopts = "-q";
13276         if (@paths) {
13277             for my $url (@paths) {
13278                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
13279             }
13280             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
13281         } else {
13282             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13283             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13284         }
13285         chdir('/');
13286     } else {
13287         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13288         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13289     }
13290 }
13291
13292 sub fetch_dell_fw {
13293     my $path = shift;
13294     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
13295     download($url);
13296 }
13297
13298 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
13299 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
13300 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
13301 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
13302     my $filename = shift;
13303
13304     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13305     chomp $product;
13306     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
13307
13308     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
13309
13310     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
13311     my @paths;
13312     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
13313         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
13314         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
13315         my $oscode;
13316         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
13317             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
13318         } else {
13319             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
13320         }
13321         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
13322         {
13323             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
13324         }
13325     }
13326     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
13327         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
13328
13329         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
13330         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
13331
13332         my $cpath = $component->{path};
13333         for my $path (@paths) {
13334             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
13335                 push(@paths, $cpath);
13336             }
13337         }
13338     }
13339     return @paths;
13340 }
13341 </pre>
13342
13343 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
13344 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
13345 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
13346 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
13347 outdated.</p>
13348
13349       </div>
13350       <div class="tags">
13351
13352
13353         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13354
13355
13356       </div>
13357     </div>
13358     <div class="padding"></div>
13359
13360     <div class="entry">
13361       <div class="title">
13362         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13363       </div>
13364       <div class="date">
13365          4th August 2011
13366       </div>
13367       <div class="body">
13368         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
13369 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
13370 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
13371 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
13372 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
13373 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
13374 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
13375 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
13376 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
13377
13378 <p><blockquote>
13379 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
13380 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
13381 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
13382 </blockquote></p>
13383
13384 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
13385 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
13386 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
13387 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
13388 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
13389 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
13390 hard to explain.</p>
13391
13392 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
13393 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
13394 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
13395 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
13396 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
13397 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
13398 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
13399 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
13400 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
13401 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
13402 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
13403 mode).</p>
13404
13405 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
13406 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
13407 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
13408 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
13409 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
13410 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
13411 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
13412 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
13413 after visiting single user mode.</p>
13414
13415 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
13416 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
13417 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
13418 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
13419 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
13420 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
13421 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
13422 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
13423
13424 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
13425 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
13426 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
13427
13428       </div>
13429       <div class="tags">
13430
13431
13432         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13433
13434
13435       </div>
13436     </div>
13437     <div class="padding"></div>
13438
13439     <div class="entry">
13440       <div class="title">
13441         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13442       </div>
13443       <div class="date">
13444         30th July 2011
13445       </div>
13446       <div class="body">
13447         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
13448 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
13449 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
13450 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
13451 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
13452 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
13453 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
13454 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
13455 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
13456 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
13457 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
13458 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
13459 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
13460
13461 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
13462 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
13463 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
13464 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
13465 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
13466 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
13467 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
13468 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
13469 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
13470
13471 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
13472 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
13473 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
13474 is presented.</p>
13475
13476 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
13477 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
13478 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
13479 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
13480 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
13481 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
13482 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
13483 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
13484 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
13485 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
13486 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
13487 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
13488 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
13489 find time to push this forward.</p>
13490
13491       </div>
13492       <div class="tags">
13493
13494
13495         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13496
13497
13498       </div>
13499     </div>
13500     <div class="padding"></div>
13501
13502     <div class="entry">
13503       <div class="title">
13504         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13505       </div>
13506       <div class="date">
13507         29th July 2011
13508       </div>
13509       <div class="body">
13510         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
13511 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
13512 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
13513 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
13514 issues.</p>
13515
13516 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
13517 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
13518 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
13519
13520 <ol>
13521
13522 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
13523 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
13524 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
13525 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
13526 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
13527 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
13528 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
13529 Debian.</li>
13530
13531 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
13532 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
13533 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
13534 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
13535 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
13536 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
13537 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
13538 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
13539 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
13540 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
13541 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
13542 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
13543 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
13544
13545 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
13546 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
13547 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
13548 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
13549 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
13550 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
13551 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
13552 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
13553 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
13554 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
13555
13556 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
13557 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
13558 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
13559 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
13560 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
13561 latter behaviour.</li>
13562
13563 </ol>
13564
13565 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
13566 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
13567 it do not matter much.</p>
13568
13569 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
13570 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
13571 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
13572
13573       </div>
13574       <div class="tags">
13575
13576
13577         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13578
13579
13580       </div>
13581     </div>
13582     <div class="padding"></div>
13583
13584     <div class="entry">
13585       <div class="title">
13586         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13587       </div>
13588       <div class="date">
13589         26th July 2011
13590       </div>
13591       <div class="body">
13592         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
13593 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
13594 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
13595 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
13596 security support for a few years.</p>
13597
13598 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
13599 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
13600 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
13601 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
13602 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
13603 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
13604 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
13605 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
13606 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
13607 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
13608 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
13609 easier in the future.</p>
13610
13611 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
13612 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
13613 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
13614 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
13615 do not have time for.</p>
13616
13617       </div>
13618       <div class="tags">
13619
13620
13621         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
13622
13623
13624       </div>
13625     </div>
13626     <div class="padding"></div>
13627
13628     <div class="entry">
13629       <div class="title">
13630         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13631       </div>
13632       <div class="date">
13633          3rd April 2011
13634       </div>
13635       <div class="body">
13636         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
13637 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
13638 update in English.</p>
13639
13640 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
13641 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
13642 of the British service
13643 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
13644 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
13645 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
13646 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
13647 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
13648 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
13649 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
13650 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
13651 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
13652 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
13653 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
13654 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
13655 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
13656
13657 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
13658 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
13659 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
13660 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
13661 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
13662 public infrastructure.</p>
13663
13664 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
13665 such service?</p>
13666
13667       </div>
13668       <div class="tags">
13669
13670
13671         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
13672
13673
13674       </div>
13675     </div>
13676     <div class="padding"></div>
13677
13678     <div class="entry">
13679       <div class="title">
13680         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13681       </div>
13682       <div class="date">
13683         28th January 2011
13684       </div>
13685       <div class="body">
13686         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
13687 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
13688 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
13689 available on the Internet, and check our locally
13690 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
13691 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
13692 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
13693 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
13694 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
13695 out which security holes were present in our free software
13696 collection.</p>
13697
13698 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
13699 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
13700 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
13701 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
13702 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
13703 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
13704 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
13705 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
13706 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
13707 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
13708 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
13709 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
13710 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
13711 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
13712 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
13713 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
13714
13715 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
13716 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
13717 check out, one could look up
13718 <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
13719 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
13720 The most recent one is
13721 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
13722 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
13723 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
13724
13725 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
13726 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
13727 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
13728 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
13729 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
13730 security issues out.</p>
13731
13732 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
13733 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
13734 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
13735 RHEL is providing
13736 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
13737 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
13738 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
13739
13740 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
13741 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
13742 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
13743 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
13744 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
13745 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
13746 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
13747 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
13748 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
13749 established soon.</p>
13750
13751 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
13752 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
13753 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
13754 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
13755 for their packages.</p>
13756
13757       </div>
13758       <div class="tags">
13759
13760
13761         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13762
13763
13764       </div>
13765     </div>
13766     <div class="padding"></div>
13767
13768     <div class="entry">
13769       <div class="title">
13770         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
13771       </div>
13772       <div class="date">
13773         23rd January 2011
13774       </div>
13775       <div class="body">
13776         <p>In the
13777 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
13778 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
13779 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
13780 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
13781 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
13782 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
13783 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
13784 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
13785 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
13786 one of my machines like this:</p>
13787
13788 <pre>
13789 loaded modules:
13790 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
13791 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
13792 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
13793 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
13794 10de:03ec pata_amd
13795 10de:03f6 sata_nv
13796 1022:1103 k8temp
13797 109e:036e bttv
13798 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
13799 11ab:4364 sky2
13800 </pre>
13801
13802 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
13803 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
13804
13805 <pre>
13806 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
13807     echo loaded pci modules:
13808     (
13809         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
13810         for address in * ; do
13811             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13812                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13813                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13814                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13815                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
13816                     echo "$id $module"
13817                 fi
13818             fi
13819         done
13820     )
13821     echo
13822 fi
13823 </pre>
13824
13825 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
13826 mappings:</p>
13827
13828 <pre>
13829 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
13830     echo loaded usb modules:
13831     (
13832         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
13833         for address in * ; do
13834             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13835                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13836                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13837                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13838                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
13839                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
13840                         echo "$id $module"
13841                     fi
13842                 fi
13843             fi
13844         done
13845     )
13846     echo
13847 fi
13848 </pre>
13849
13850 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
13851 well.</p>
13852
13853       </div>
13854       <div class="tags">
13855
13856
13857         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13858
13859
13860       </div>
13861     </div>
13862     <div class="padding"></div>
13863
13864     <div class="entry">
13865       <div class="title">
13866         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
13867       </div>
13868       <div class="date">
13869         22nd December 2010
13870       </div>
13871       <div class="body">
13872         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13873 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13874 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13875 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13876 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13877 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13878 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13879 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13880 university.</p>
13881
13882 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13883 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13884 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13885 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13886 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13887 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13888 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13889 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13890
13891 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13892 I perform on a new model.</p>
13893
13894 <ul>
13895
13896 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13897 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13898 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13899
13900 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13901 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13902
13903 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13904 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13905 reported by the program.</li>
13906
13907 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13908 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13909 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13910 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13911 normally test this by playing
13912 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13913 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13914
13915 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13916 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13917
13918 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13919 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13920
13921 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13922 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13923
13924 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13925 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13926 few.</li>
13927
13928 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13929 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13930 notice this.</li>
13931
13932 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13933 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13934 resume.</li>
13935
13936 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13937 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13938 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13939 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13940 not.</li>
13941
13942 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13943 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13944 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13945 existence.</li>
13946
13947 </ul>
13948
13949 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13950 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13951 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13952 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13953 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13954 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13955 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13956 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13957
13958       </div>
13959       <div class="tags">
13960
13961
13962         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13963
13964
13965       </div>
13966     </div>
13967     <div class="padding"></div>
13968
13969     <div class="entry">
13970       <div class="title">
13971         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13972       </div>
13973       <div class="date">
13974         11th December 2010
13975       </div>
13976       <div class="body">
13977         <p>As I continue to explore
13978 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13979 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13980 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13981
13982 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13983 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13984 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13985 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13986 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13987 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13988 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13989 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13990 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13991 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13992 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13993 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13994 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13995 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13996 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13997 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13998 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13999 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
14000 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
14001 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
14002
14003 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
14004 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
14005 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
14006 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
14007 If the Skolelinux foundation
14008 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
14009 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
14010 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
14011 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
14012 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
14013 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
14014 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
14015 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
14016
14017 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
14018 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
14019 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
14020 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
14021 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
14022 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
14023 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
14024 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
14025 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
14026 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
14027 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
14028 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
14029 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
14030 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
14031 currencies.</p>
14032
14033 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
14034 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
14035 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
14036 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
14037 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
14038 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
14039 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
14040 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
14041 BitCoins.  Check out
14042 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
14043 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
14044 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
14045 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
14046 yet.</p>
14047
14048 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
14049 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
14050 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
14051 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
14052 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
14053
14054       </div>
14055       <div class="tags">
14056
14057
14058         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14059
14060
14061       </div>
14062     </div>
14063     <div class="padding"></div>
14064
14065     <div class="entry">
14066       <div class="title">
14067         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
14068       </div>
14069       <div class="date">
14070         10th December 2010
14071       </div>
14072       <div class="body">
14073         <p>With this weeks lawless
14074 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
14075 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
14076 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
14077 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
14078 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
14079 A blog post from
14080 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
14081 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
14082 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
14083 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
14084 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
14085 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
14086 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
14087
14088 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
14089 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
14090 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
14091 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
14092 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
14093 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
14094 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
14095 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
14096 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
14097 Debian</a> soon.</p>
14098
14099 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
14100 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
14101 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
14102 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
14103 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
14104 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
14105 you can even get
14106 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
14107 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
14108 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
14109 on the current exchange rates.</p>
14110
14111 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
14112 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
14113 donations to the address
14114 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
14115
14116       </div>
14117       <div class="tags">
14118
14119
14120         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14121
14122
14123       </div>
14124     </div>
14125     <div class="padding"></div>
14126
14127     <div class="entry">
14128       <div class="title">
14129         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
14130       </div>
14131       <div class="date">
14132         27th November 2010
14133       </div>
14134       <div class="body">
14135         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
14136 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
14137 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
14138 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
14139 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
14140 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
14141 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
14142 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
14143
14144 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
14145 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14146 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
14147 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
14148 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
14149 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
14150 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
14151 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
14152 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
14153 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
14154 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
14155
14156 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
14157 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
14158 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
14159 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
14160 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
14161 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
14162 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
14163 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
14164 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
14165 what is going on.</p>
14166
14167       </div>
14168       <div class="tags">
14169
14170
14171         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14172
14173
14174       </div>
14175     </div>
14176     <div class="padding"></div>
14177
14178     <div class="entry">
14179       <div class="title">
14180         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
14181       </div>
14182       <div class="date">
14183         22nd November 2010
14184       </div>
14185       <div class="body">
14186         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
14187 upgrade testing of the
14188 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14189 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
14190 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
14191 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
14192
14193 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14194
14195 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14196
14197 <blockquote><p>
14198   apache2.2-bin
14199   aptdaemon
14200   baobab
14201   binfmt-support
14202   browser-plugin-gnash
14203   cheese-common
14204   cli-common
14205   cups-pk-helper
14206   dmz-cursor-theme
14207   empathy
14208   empathy-common
14209   freedesktop-sound-theme
14210   freeglut3
14211   gconf-defaults-service
14212   gdm-themes
14213   gedit-plugins
14214   geoclue
14215   geoclue-hostip
14216   geoclue-localnet
14217   geoclue-manual
14218   geoclue-yahoo
14219   gnash
14220   gnash-common
14221   gnome
14222   gnome-backgrounds
14223   gnome-cards-data
14224   gnome-codec-install
14225   gnome-core
14226   gnome-desktop-environment
14227   gnome-disk-utility
14228   gnome-screenshot
14229   gnome-search-tool
14230   gnome-session-canberra
14231   gnome-system-log
14232   gnome-themes-extras
14233   gnome-themes-more
14234   gnome-user-share
14235   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14236   gstreamer0.10-tools
14237   gtk2-engines
14238   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14239   gtk2-engines-smooth
14240   hamster-applet
14241   libapache2-mod-dnssd
14242   libapr1
14243   libaprutil1
14244   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
14245   libaprutil1-ldap
14246   libart2.0-cil
14247   libboost-date-time1.42.0
14248   libboost-python1.42.0
14249   libboost-thread1.42.0
14250   libchamplain-0.4-0
14251   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
14252   libcheese-gtk18
14253   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14254   libcryptui0
14255   libdiscid0
14256   libelf1
14257   libepc-1.0-2
14258   libepc-common
14259   libepc-ui-1.0-2
14260   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14261   libfreerdp0
14262   libgconf2.0-cil
14263   libgdata-common
14264   libgdata7
14265   libgdu-gtk0
14266   libgee2
14267   libgeoclue0
14268   libgexiv2-0
14269   libgif4
14270   libglade2.0-cil
14271   libglib2.0-cil
14272   libgmime2.4-cil
14273   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14274   libgnome2.24-cil
14275   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
14276   libgpod-common
14277   libgpod4
14278   libgtk2.0-cil
14279   libgtkglext1
14280   libgtksourceview2.0-common
14281   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14282   libmono-addins0.2-cil
14283   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
14284   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14285   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
14286   libmono-posix2.0-cil
14287   libmono-security2.0-cil
14288   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14289   libmono-system2.0-cil
14290   libmtp8
14291   libmusicbrainz3-6
14292   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
14293   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
14294   libopal3.6.8
14295   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
14296   libpt2.6.7
14297   libpython2.6
14298   librpm1
14299   librpmio1
14300   libsdl1.2debian
14301   libsrtp0
14302   libssh-4
14303   libtelepathy-farsight0
14304   libtelepathy-glib0
14305   libtidy-0.99-0
14306   media-player-info
14307   mesa-utils
14308   mono-2.0-gac
14309   mono-gac
14310   mono-runtime
14311   nautilus-sendto
14312   nautilus-sendto-empathy
14313   p7zip-full
14314   pkg-config
14315   python-aptdaemon
14316   python-aptdaemon-gtk
14317   python-axiom
14318   python-beautifulsoup
14319   python-bugbuddy
14320   python-clientform
14321   python-coherence
14322   python-configobj
14323   python-crypto
14324   python-cupshelpers
14325   python-elementtree
14326   python-epsilon
14327   python-evolution
14328   python-feedparser
14329   python-gdata
14330   python-gdbm
14331   python-gst0.10
14332   python-gtkglext1
14333   python-gtksourceview2
14334   python-httplib2
14335   python-louie
14336   python-mako
14337   python-markupsafe
14338   python-mechanize
14339   python-nevow
14340   python-notify
14341   python-opengl
14342   python-openssl
14343   python-pam
14344   python-pkg-resources
14345   python-pyasn1
14346   python-pysqlite2
14347   python-rdflib
14348   python-serial
14349   python-tagpy
14350   python-twisted-bin
14351   python-twisted-conch
14352   python-twisted-core
14353   python-twisted-web
14354   python-utidylib
14355   python-webkit
14356   python-xdg
14357   python-zope.interface
14358   remmina
14359   remmina-plugin-data
14360   remmina-plugin-rdp
14361   remmina-plugin-vnc
14362   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14363   rhythmbox-plugins
14364   rpm-common
14365   rpm2cpio
14366   seahorse-plugins
14367   shotwell
14368   software-center
14369   system-config-printer-udev
14370   telepathy-gabble
14371   telepathy-mission-control-5
14372   telepathy-salut
14373   tomboy
14374   totem
14375   totem-coherence
14376   totem-mozilla
14377   totem-plugins
14378   transmission-common
14379   xdg-user-dirs
14380   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
14381   xserver-xephyr
14382 </p></blockquote>
14383
14384 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14385
14386 <blockquote><p>
14387   cheese
14388   ekiga
14389   eog
14390   epiphany-extensions
14391   evolution-exchange
14392   fast-user-switch-applet
14393   file-roller
14394   gcalctool
14395   gconf-editor
14396   gdm
14397   gedit
14398   gedit-common
14399   gnome-games
14400   gnome-games-data
14401   gnome-nettool
14402   gnome-system-tools
14403   gnome-themes
14404   gnuchess
14405   gucharmap
14406   guile-1.8-libs
14407   libavahi-ui0
14408   libdmx1
14409   libgalago3
14410   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14411   libgtksourceview2.0-0
14412   liblircclient0
14413   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
14414   libspeexdsp1
14415   libsvga1
14416   rhythmbox
14417   seahorse
14418   sound-juicer
14419   system-config-printer
14420   totem-common
14421   transmission-gtk
14422   vinagre
14423   vino
14424 </p></blockquote>
14425
14426 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14427
14428 <blockquote><p>
14429   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14430 </p></blockquote>
14431
14432 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14433
14434 <blockquote><p>
14435 [nothing]
14436 </p></blockquote>
14437
14438 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14439
14440 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14441
14442 <blockquote><p>
14443   ksmserver
14444 </p></blockquote>
14445
14446 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14447
14448 <blockquote><p>
14449   kwin
14450   network-manager-kde
14451 </p></blockquote>
14452
14453 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14454
14455 <blockquote><p>
14456   arts
14457   dolphin
14458   freespacenotifier
14459   google-gadgets-gst
14460   google-gadgets-xul
14461   kappfinder
14462   kcalc
14463   kcharselect
14464   kde-core
14465   kde-plasma-desktop
14466   kde-standard
14467   kde-window-manager
14468   kdeartwork
14469   kdeartwork-emoticons
14470   kdeartwork-style
14471   kdeartwork-theme-icon
14472   kdebase
14473   kdebase-apps
14474   kdebase-workspace
14475   kdebase-workspace-bin
14476   kdebase-workspace-data
14477   kdeeject
14478   kdelibs
14479   kdeplasma-addons
14480   kdeutils
14481   kdewallpapers
14482   kdf
14483   kfloppy
14484   kgpg
14485   khelpcenter4
14486   kinfocenter
14487   konq-plugins-l10n
14488   konqueror-nsplugins
14489   kscreensaver
14490   kscreensaver-xsavers
14491   ktimer
14492   kwrite
14493   libgle3
14494   libkde4-ruby1.8
14495   libkonq5
14496   libkonq5-templates
14497   libnetpbm10
14498   libplasma-ruby
14499   libplasma-ruby1.8
14500   libqt4-ruby1.8
14501   marble-data
14502   marble-plugins
14503   netpbm
14504   nuvola-icon-theme
14505   plasma-dataengines-workspace
14506   plasma-desktop
14507   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
14508   plasma-runners-addons
14509   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
14510   plasma-scriptengine-python
14511   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
14512   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
14513   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
14514   plasma-scriptengines
14515   plasma-wallpapers-addons
14516   plasma-widget-folderview
14517   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14518   ruby
14519   sweeper
14520   update-notifier-kde
14521   xscreensaver-data-extra
14522   xscreensaver-gl
14523   xscreensaver-gl-extra
14524   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14525 </p></blockquote>
14526
14527 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14528
14529 <blockquote><p>
14530   ark
14531   google-gadgets-common
14532   google-gadgets-qt
14533   htdig
14534   kate
14535   kdebase-bin
14536   kdebase-data
14537   kdepasswd
14538   kfind
14539   klipper
14540   konq-plugins
14541   konqueror
14542   ksysguard
14543   ksysguardd
14544   libarchive1
14545   libcln6
14546   libeet1
14547   libeina-svn-06
14548   libggadget-1.0-0b
14549   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
14550   libgps19
14551   libkdecorations4
14552   libkephal4
14553   libkonq4
14554   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
14555   libkscreensaver5
14556   libksgrd4
14557   libksignalplotter4
14558   libkunitconversion4
14559   libkwineffects1a
14560   libmarblewidget4
14561   libntrack-qt4-1
14562   libntrack0
14563   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
14564   libplasmaclock4a
14565   libplasmagenericshell4
14566   libprocesscore4a
14567   libprocessui4a
14568   libqalculate5
14569   libqedje0a
14570   libqtruby4shared2
14571   libqzion0a
14572   libruby1.8
14573   libscim8c2a
14574   libsmokekdecore4-3
14575   libsmokekdeui4-3
14576   libsmokekfile3
14577   libsmokekhtml3
14578   libsmokekio3
14579   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
14580   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
14581   libsmokekparts3
14582   libsmokektexteditor3
14583   libsmokekutils3
14584   libsmokenepomuk3
14585   libsmokephonon3
14586   libsmokeplasma3
14587   libsmokeqtcore4-3
14588   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
14589   libsmokeqtgui4-3
14590   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
14591   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
14592   libsmokeqtscript4-3
14593   libsmokeqtsql4-3
14594   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
14595   libsmokeqttest4-3
14596   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
14597   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
14598   libsmokeqtxml4-3
14599   libsmokesolid3
14600   libsmokesoprano3
14601   libtaskmanager4a
14602   libtidy-0.99-0
14603   libweather-ion4a
14604   libxklavier16
14605   libxxf86misc1
14606   okteta
14607   oxygencursors
14608   plasma-dataengines-addons
14609   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
14610   plasma-widget-lancelot
14611   plasma-widgets-addons
14612   plasma-widgets-workspace
14613   polkit-kde-1
14614   ruby1.8
14615   systemsettings
14616   update-notifier-common
14617 </p></blockquote>
14618
14619 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
14620 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
14621 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
14622 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
14623
14624       </div>
14625       <div class="tags">
14626
14627
14628         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14629
14630
14631       </div>
14632     </div>
14633     <div class="padding"></div>
14634
14635     <div class="entry">
14636       <div class="title">
14637         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
14638       </div>
14639       <div class="date">
14640         22nd November 2010
14641       </div>
14642       <div class="body">
14643         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
14644 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
14645 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
14646 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
14647 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
14648 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
14649 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
14650 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
14651 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
14652
14653 <p>I found
14654 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
14655 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
14656 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
14657 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
14658 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
14659 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
14660
14661 <pre>
14662 #!/bin/sh
14663
14664 # Based on
14665 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
14666
14667 set -e
14668 set -x
14669
14670 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
14671     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
14672     exit 1
14673 else
14674     host="$1"
14675 fi
14676
14677 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
14678     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
14679     exit 1
14680 fi
14681
14682 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
14683 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14684 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14685 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
14686
14687 img=$host.img
14688 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
14689 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
14690
14691 parted $img mklabel msdos
14692 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
14693 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
14694 parted $img set 1 boot on
14695
14696 modprobe dm-mod
14697 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
14698 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
14699
14700 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
14701 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
14702 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
14703
14704 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
14705 losetup -d /dev/loop0
14706 </pre>
14707
14708 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
14709 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
14710
14711 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
14712 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
14713 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
14714 seem to work just fine.</p>
14715
14716       </div>
14717       <div class="tags">
14718
14719
14720         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14721
14722
14723       </div>
14724     </div>
14725     <div class="padding"></div>
14726
14727     <div class="entry">
14728       <div class="title">
14729         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
14730       </div>
14731       <div class="date">
14732         20th November 2010
14733       </div>
14734       <div class="body">
14735         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
14736 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14737 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14738 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
14739
14740 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14741 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14742 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
14743
14744 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14745
14746 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14747
14748 <blockquote><p>
14749   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14750   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
14751   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14752   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14753   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14754   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14755   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14756   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14757   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14758   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14759   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14760   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14761   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14762   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14763   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
14764   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
14765   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14766   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
14767   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14768   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14769   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
14770   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14771   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14772   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14773   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14774   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14775   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14776   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14777   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14778   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
14779   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
14780   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14781   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14782   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
14783   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
14784   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14785   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14786   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14787   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
14788   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14789   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14790   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14791   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14792   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14793   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14794   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14795   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14796   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14797   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14798   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14799   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14800   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14801   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14802   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14803   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14804   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14805   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14806   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14807   zip
14808 </p></blockquote>
14809
14810 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14811
14812 <blockquote><p>
14813   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14814   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14815   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14816   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14817   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14818   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14819   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14820   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14821   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14822   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14823   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14824   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14825   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14826   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14827   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14828   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14829   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14830   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14831   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14832   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14833   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14834   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14835   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14836   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14837   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14838   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14839   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14840   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14841   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14842 </p></blockquote>
14843
14844 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14845
14846 <blockquote><p>
14847   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14848 </p></blockquote>
14849
14850 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14851
14852 <blockquote><p>
14853 [nothing]
14854 </p></blockquote>
14855
14856 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14857
14858 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14859
14860 <blockquote><p>
14861   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14862   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14863   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14864   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14865   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14866   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14867   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14868   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14869   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14870   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14871   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14872   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14873   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14874   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14875   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14876   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14877   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14878   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14879   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14880   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14881   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14882   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14883   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14884   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14885   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14886   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14887   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14888   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14889   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14890   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14891 </p></blockquote>
14892
14893 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14894
14895 <blockquote><p>
14896   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14897   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14898   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14899   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14900   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14901   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14902   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14903   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14904   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14905   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14906   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14907   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14908   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14909   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14910   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14911   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14912   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14913   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14914   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14915   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14916   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14917   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14918   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14919   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14920   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14921   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14922   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14923   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14924   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14925   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14926   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14927   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14928   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14929 </p></blockquote>
14930
14931 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14932
14933 <blockquote><p>
14934   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14935   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14936   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14937   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14938   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14939   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14940   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14941 </p></blockquote>
14942
14943 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14944
14945 <blockquote><p>
14946   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14947 </p></blockquote>
14948
14949       </div>
14950       <div class="tags">
14951
14952
14953         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14954
14955
14956       </div>
14957     </div>
14958     <div class="padding"></div>
14959
14960     <div class="entry">
14961       <div class="title">
14962         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14963       </div>
14964       <div class="date">
14965         20th November 2010
14966       </div>
14967       <div class="body">
14968         <p>Answering
14969 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14970 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14971 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14972 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14973 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14974 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14975 releases out more often.</p>
14976
14977 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14978 I have considered setting up a <a
14979 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14980 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14981 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14982 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14983 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14984 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14985 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14986 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14987 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14988 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14989 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14990 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14991
14992       </div>
14993       <div class="tags">
14994
14995
14996         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14997
14998
14999       </div>
15000     </div>
15001     <div class="padding"></div>
15002
15003     <div class="entry">
15004       <div class="title">
15005         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
15006       </div>
15007       <div class="date">
15008          9th November 2010
15009       </div>
15010       <div class="body">
15011         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
15012
15013 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
15014 3D linked in from
15015 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
15016 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
15017
15018       </div>
15019       <div class="tags">
15020
15021
15022         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15023
15024
15025       </div>
15026     </div>
15027     <div class="padding"></div>
15028
15029     <div class="entry">
15030       <div class="title">
15031         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
15032       </div>
15033       <div class="date">
15034         24th October 2010
15035       </div>
15036       <div class="body">
15037         <p>Some updates.</p>
15038
15039 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
15040 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
15041 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
15042 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
15043 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
15044 :)</p>
15045
15046 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
15047 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
15048 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
15049 It is called
15050 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
15051 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
15052 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
15053 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
15054 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
15055 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
15056
15057 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
15058 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
15059 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
15060 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
15061 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
15062 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
15063 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
15064 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
15065 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
15066 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
15067
15068       </div>
15069       <div class="tags">
15070
15071
15072         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
15073
15074
15075       </div>
15076     </div>
15077     <div class="padding"></div>
15078
15079     <div class="entry">
15080       <div class="title">
15081         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
15082       </div>
15083       <div class="date">
15084          4th September 2010
15085       </div>
15086       <div class="body">
15087         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
15088 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
15089 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
15090 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
15091 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
15092 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
15093 installed.</p>
15094
15095 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
15096 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
15097 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
15098 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
15099 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
15100 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
15101 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
15102 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
15103 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
15104
15105 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
15106 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
15107 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
15108 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
15109 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
15110 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
15111 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
15112 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
15113 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
15114 pages they want to visit.</p>
15115
15116 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
15117 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
15118 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
15119 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
15120 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
15121 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
15122 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
15123 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
15124 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
15125 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
15126 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
15127
15128       </div>
15129       <div class="tags">
15130
15131
15132         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15133
15134
15135       </div>
15136     </div>
15137     <div class="padding"></div>
15138
15139     <div class="entry">
15140       <div class="title">
15141         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
15142       </div>
15143       <div class="date">
15144         27th July 2010
15145       </div>
15146       <div class="body">
15147         <p>I discovered this while doing
15148 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
15149 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
15150 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15151 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15152 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
15153
15154 <p>An example is from todays
15155 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
15156 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15157 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15158 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15159 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15160 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15161 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
15162
15163 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
15164
15165 <blockquote><pre>
15166 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15167  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
15168   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15169 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15170  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15171 </pre></blockquote>
15172
15173 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15174 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
15175 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15176 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15177 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15178 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15179 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15180 of dependency loops.</p>
15181
15182 <p>Thanks to
15183 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
15184 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
15185 dependencies
15186 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
15187 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
15188
15189 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15190 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
15191 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
15192 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15193 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15194 it.</p>
15195
15196       </div>
15197       <div class="tags">
15198
15199
15200         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15201
15202
15203       </div>
15204     </div>
15205     <div class="padding"></div>
15206
15207     <div class="entry">
15208       <div class="title">
15209         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
15210       </div>
15211       <div class="date">
15212         17th July 2010
15213       </div>
15214       <div class="body">
15215         <p>This is a
15216 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
15217 on my
15218 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
15219 work</a> on
15220 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
15221 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
15222
15223 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15224 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15225 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
15226 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
15227
15228 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15229 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15230 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
15231
15232 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
15233
15234 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
15235 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15236 the web.
15237
15238 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15239 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15240 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
15241 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15242 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15243 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
15244
15245 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15246 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15247 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
15248 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
15249 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
15250 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
15251 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15252 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15253 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15254 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15255 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15256 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
15257 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15258 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15259 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
15260 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
15261
15262 <blockquote><pre>
15263 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15264   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15265   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15266   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15267   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15268   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15269   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15270
15271 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15272   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15273   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
15274   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15275   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15276   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15277 </pre></blockquote>
15278
15279 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15280 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15281 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
15282 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15283 also exist.</p>
15284
15285 <blockquote><pre>
15286 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15287 objectclass: top
15288 objectclass: dnsdomain
15289 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15290 dc: tjener
15291 arecord: 10.0.2.2
15292 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15293
15294 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15295 objectclass: top
15296 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15297 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15298 dc: 2
15299 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15300 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15301 </pre></blockquote>
15302
15303 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
15304 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
15305 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15306 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15307 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15308 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15309 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
15310 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
15311 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15312 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15313 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15314 instead.</p>
15315
15316 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15317 like this:</p>
15318
15319 <blockquote><pre>
15320 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15321   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15322   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15323   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15324   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15325   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15326
15327 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15328   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15329 </pre></blockquote>
15330
15331 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15332 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15333 reverse lookups.</p>
15334
15335 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15336 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15337 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
15338 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
15339
15340 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15341 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15342 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
15343
15344 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15345 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15346 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15347 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15348 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
15349
15350 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15351 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15352 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15353 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15354 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
15355
15356 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15357 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15358 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15359 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15360 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15361 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
15362
15363 <blockquote><pre>
15364 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15365     SUP top
15366     AUXILIARY
15367     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15368           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15369           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15370           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15371           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15372     ))
15373 </pre></blockquote>
15374
15375 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15376 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15377 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15378 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15379 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15380 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
15381
15382 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
15383
15384 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15385 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15386 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15387 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15388 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
15389
15390 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15391 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15392 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15393 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
15394
15395 <blockquote><pre>
15396 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15397 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15398 </pre></blockquote>
15399
15400 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15401 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15402 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
15403 search result is this entry:</p>
15404
15405 <blockquote><pre>
15406 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15407 cn: dhcp
15408 objectClass: top
15409 objectClass: dhcpServer
15410 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15411 </pre></blockquote>
15412
15413 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15414 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15415 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15416 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15417 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15418 The search result is this entry:</p>
15419
15420 <blockquote><pre>
15421 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15422 cn: DHCP Config
15423 objectClass: top
15424 objectClass: dhcpService
15425 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15426 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15427 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15428 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15429 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
15430 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
15431 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
15432 </pre></blockquote>
15433
15434 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
15435 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15436 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15437 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15438 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
15439 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
15440 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15441 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15442 related computer objects.</p>
15443
15444 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15445 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
15446 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15447 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15448 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
15449 like:</p>
15450
15451 <blockquote><pre>
15452 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15453 cn: hostname
15454 objectClass: top
15455 objectClass: dhcpHost
15456 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15457 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15458 </pre></blockquote>
15459
15460 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15461 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15462 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
15463 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15464 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
15465 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15466 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15467 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15468 structural object class.
15469
15470 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15471
15472 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15473 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15474 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15475 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15476 in the configuration.</p>
15477
15478 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15479 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15480 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15481 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15482 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15483 structure.</p>
15484
15485 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15486 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
15487
15488 <blockquote><pre>
15489 ou=services
15490   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15491     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15492     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15493       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15494         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15495     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15496       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15497         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15498     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15499       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15500 </pre></blockquote>
15501
15502 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15503 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15504 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15505 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
15506
15507 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15508 like this:</p>
15509
15510 <blockquote><pre>
15511 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15512 dc: hostname
15513 objectClass: top
15514 objectClass: dhcpHost
15515 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15516 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15517 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15518 arecord: 10.11.12.13
15519 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15520 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15521 </pre></blockquote>
15522
15523 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15524 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15525 auxiliary object class.</p>
15526
15527       </div>
15528       <div class="tags">
15529
15530
15531         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15532
15533
15534       </div>
15535     </div>
15536     <div class="padding"></div>
15537
15538     <div class="entry">
15539       <div class="title">
15540         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
15541       </div>
15542       <div class="date">
15543         14th July 2010
15544       </div>
15545       <div class="body">
15546         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15547 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15548 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15549 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15550 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
15551
15552 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15553 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
15554
15555 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
15556 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
15557 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
15558 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
15559 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
15560 to a slave DNS server.</p>
15561
15562 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
15563 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
15564 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
15565 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
15566 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
15567 seem to work.</p>
15568
15569 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
15570 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
15571 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
15572 this:</p>
15573
15574 <blockquote><pre>
15575   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15576   cn: hostname
15577   objectClass: dhcphost
15578   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15579   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
15580   associateddomain: hostname.intern
15581   arecord: 10.11.12.13
15582   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15583   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
15584   ldapconfigsound: Y
15585 </pre></blockquote>
15586
15587 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
15588 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
15589 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
15590 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
15591
15592 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
15593 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
15594 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
15595 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
15596 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
15597 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
15598 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
15599 might be a good place to put it.</p>
15600
15601 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15602 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15603
15604       </div>
15605       <div class="tags">
15606
15607
15608         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15609
15610
15611       </div>
15612     </div>
15613     <div class="padding"></div>
15614
15615     <div class="entry">
15616       <div class="title">
15617         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
15618       </div>
15619       <div class="date">
15620         11th July 2010
15621       </div>
15622       <div class="body">
15623         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
15624 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
15625 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
15626 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
15627
15628 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
15629 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
15630 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
15631 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
15632 LTSP clients.</p>
15633
15634 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
15635 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
15636 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
15637
15638 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
15639 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
15640 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
15641
15642 <blockquote><pre>
15643 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
15644 #
15645 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
15646 #
15647 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
15648 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
15649 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
15650 #
15651 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
15652 # existence of attribute names.
15653 #
15654 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
15655 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
15656 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
15657 #
15658 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
15659 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
15660 #
15661 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
15662 #     SUP top
15663 #     AUXILIARY
15664 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
15665
15666 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
15667 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
15668     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
15669     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
15670         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
15671         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
15672             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
15673             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
15674             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
15675             # bass value on to clients
15676             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
15677         done
15678     done
15679 fi
15680 </pre></blockquote>
15681
15682 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
15683 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
15684 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
15685 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
15686 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
15687
15688 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15689 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15690
15691 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
15692 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
15693 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
15694 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
15695 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
15696 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
15697
15698       </div>
15699       <div class="tags">
15700
15701
15702         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15703
15704
15705       </div>
15706     </div>
15707     <div class="padding"></div>
15708
15709     <div class="entry">
15710       <div class="title">
15711         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15712       </div>
15713       <div class="date">
15714          9th July 2010
15715       </div>
15716       <div class="body">
15717         <p>Since
15718 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
15719 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
15720 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
15721 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
15722 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
15723 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
15724 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
15725 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
15726 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
15727 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
15728 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
15729 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
15730 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
15731
15732       </div>
15733       <div class="tags">
15734
15735
15736         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15737
15738
15739       </div>
15740     </div>
15741     <div class="padding"></div>
15742
15743     <div class="entry">
15744       <div class="title">
15745         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
15746       </div>
15747       <div class="date">
15748          3rd July 2010
15749       </div>
15750       <div class="body">
15751         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
15752 href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
15753 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
15754 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
15755 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
15756 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
15757 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
15758 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
15759
15760 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
15761 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
15762 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
15763 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
15764 publish the difference.</p>
15765
15766 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15767
15768 <blockquote><p>
15769   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15770   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
15771   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
15772   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15773   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
15774   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15775   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
15776   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
15777 </p></blockquote>
15778
15779 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15780
15781 <blockquote><p>
15782   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
15783   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
15784   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
15785   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
15786   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
15787   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
15788   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15789   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
15790   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15791   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15792   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
15793   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
15794   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
15795   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
15796   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
15797   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
15798   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
15799   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
15800   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
15801   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
15802 </p></blockquote>
15803
15804 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15805
15806 <blockquote><p>
15807   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
15808   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
15809   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15810   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15811   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
15812   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
15813   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
15814   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15815   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15816   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15817   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15818   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
15819   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
15820   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
15821   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
15822   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
15823   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
15824   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
15825   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
15826   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
15827   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
15828 </p></blockquote>
15829
15830 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15831
15832 <blockquote><p>
15833   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
15834   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
15835   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
15836 </p></blockquote>
15837
15838 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
15839 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
15840 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
15841 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
15842 the difference somewhat.
15843
15844       </div>
15845       <div class="tags">
15846
15847
15848         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15849
15850
15851       </div>
15852     </div>
15853     <div class="padding"></div>
15854
15855     <div class="entry">
15856       <div class="title">
15857         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15858       </div>
15859       <div class="date">
15860         28th June 2010
15861       </div>
15862       <div class="body">
15863         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15864 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15865 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
15866 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15867 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
15868 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15869 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
15870 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15871 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
15872 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
15873
15874 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15875 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15876 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15877 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15878 released.</p>
15879
15880 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
15881 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15882 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
15883 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
15884
15885 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15886 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15887
15888 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15889 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
15890 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15891 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
15892 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
15893
15894       </div>
15895       <div class="tags">
15896
15897
15898         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15899
15900
15901       </div>
15902     </div>
15903     <div class="padding"></div>
15904
15905     <div class="entry">
15906       <div class="title">
15907         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
15908       </div>
15909       <div class="date">
15910         24th June 2010
15911       </div>
15912       <div class="body">
15913         <p>A while back, I
15914 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15915 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15916 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15917 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
15918
15919 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15920 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15921 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15922 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
15923
15924 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15925 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15926 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15927 Debian Edu.</p>
15928
15929 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15930 the
15931 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15932 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15933 available today from IETF.</p>
15934
15935 <pre>
15936 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
15937 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
15938 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
15939  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15940         NAME 'dhcpHost'
15941         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15942 -       SUP top
15943 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
15944         MUST cn
15945         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15946         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15947 </pre>
15948
15949 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15950 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15951 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
15952
15953 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15954 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15955
15956       </div>
15957       <div class="tags">
15958
15959
15960         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15961
15962
15963       </div>
15964     </div>
15965     <div class="padding"></div>
15966
15967     <div class="entry">
15968       <div class="title">
15969         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
15970       </div>
15971       <div class="date">
15972         16th June 2010
15973       </div>
15974       <div class="body">
15975         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15976 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
15977 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15978 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15979 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15980 this:
15981
15982 <blockquote><pre>
15983 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15984 tasksel --new-install
15985 </pre></blockquote>
15986
15987 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15988 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15989 any output what so ever.
15990
15991 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15992 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15993 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15994 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15995 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15996 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
15997 code like this:
15998
15999 <blockquote><pre>
16000 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16001 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
16002 $cmd
16003 </pre></blockquote>
16004
16005 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
16006 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
16007 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
16008 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
16009 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
16010 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
16011 installation.</p>
16012
16013 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
16014 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
16015 like this.</p>
16016
16017       </div>
16018       <div class="tags">
16019
16020
16021         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16022
16023
16024       </div>
16025     </div>
16026     <div class="padding"></div>
16027
16028     <div class="entry">
16029       <div class="title">
16030         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
16031       </div>
16032       <div class="date">
16033         13th June 2010
16034       </div>
16035       <div class="body">
16036         <p>My
16037 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
16038 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
16039 finally made the upgrade logs available from
16040 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
16041 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
16042 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
16043 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
16044
16045 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
16046 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
16047 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
16048 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
16049 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
16050 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
16051 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
16052 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
16053
16054 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
16055 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
16056 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
16057 too surprising.</p>
16058
16059 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
16060 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
16061 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
16062 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
16063 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
16064 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
16065 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
16066 continue.</p>
16067
16068 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
16069 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
16070   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
16071   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
16072   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
16073   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
16074   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
16075   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16076   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16077   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16078   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16079   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16080   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16081   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16082   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16083   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16084   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16085   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16086   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16087   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16088   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16089   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16090   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16091   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16092   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16093   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16094   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16095   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16096   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16097   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
16098
16099 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
16100
16101 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16102   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16103   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16104   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16105   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16106   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16107   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16108   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16109   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16110   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16111   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16112   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16113   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16114   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16115   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16116   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16117   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16118   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16119   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16120   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16121   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16122   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16123   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16124   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16125   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16126   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16127   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16128   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16129   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16130   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16131   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16132   zip</p>
16133
16134 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
16135
16136 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16137   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16138   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16139   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16140   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16141   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16142   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16143   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16144   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16145   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16146   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16147   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16148   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16149   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16150   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16151   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16152   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16153   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16154   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16155   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16156   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16157   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16158   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16159   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16160   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16161   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16162   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16163   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
16164
16165 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
16166 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
16167   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16168   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
16169   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
16170   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16171   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
16172   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
16173   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16174   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
16175   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
16176   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
16177   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
16178   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
16179   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
16180   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
16181   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
16182   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16183   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16184   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16185   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16186   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16187   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16188   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16189   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16190   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16191   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16192   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16193   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16194   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16195   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16196   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16197   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16198   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16199   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16200   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16201   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16202   xulrunner-1.9</p>
16203
16204
16205       </div>
16206       <div class="tags">
16207
16208
16209         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16210
16211
16212       </div>
16213     </div>
16214     <div class="padding"></div>
16215
16216     <div class="entry">
16217       <div class="title">
16218         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16219       </div>
16220       <div class="date">
16221         11th June 2010
16222       </div>
16223       <div class="body">
16224         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16225 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
16226 have been discovered and reported in the process
16227 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
16228 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
16229 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
16230 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16231 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
16232
16233 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16234 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16235 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16236 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16237 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16238 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
16239
16240 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16241 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16242 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16243 is created.  The bug report
16244 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
16245 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16246 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
16247 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16248 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
16249 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
16250 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16251 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16252 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
16253 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16254 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16255 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16256 Debian Squeeze.</p>
16257
16258 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
16259 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
16260 trick:</p>
16261
16262 <blockquote><pre>
16263 #!/bin/sh
16264 set -ex
16265
16266 if [ "$1" ] ; then
16267     desktop=$1
16268 else
16269     desktop=gnome
16270 fi
16271
16272 from=lenny
16273 to=squeeze
16274
16275 exec &lt; /dev/null
16276 unset LANG
16277 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16278 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16279 fuser -mv .
16280 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16281 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16282 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
16283 #!/bin/sh
16284 exit 101
16285 EOF
16286 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16287 exit_cleanup() {
16288     umount $tmpdir/proc
16289 }
16290 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16291 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16292 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16293
16294 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16295
16296 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
16297 # to return the correct answers.
16298 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
16299     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
16300
16301 # Include the desktop and laptop task
16302 for test in desktop laptop ; do
16303     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
16304 #!/bin/sh
16305 exit 2
16306 EOF
16307     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
16308 done
16309
16310 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16311 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
16312 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
16313 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
16314
16315 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
16316 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16317 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16318 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
16319 fuser -mv
16320 </pre></blockquote>
16321
16322 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
16323 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
16324 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
16325 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
16326 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
16327 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
16328
16329 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
16330 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
16331 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
16332 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
16333 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
16334 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
16335 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
16336
16337 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
16338 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
16339 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
16340 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
16341 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
16342 packages.</p>
16343
16344       </div>
16345       <div class="tags">
16346
16347
16348         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16349
16350
16351       </div>
16352     </div>
16353     <div class="padding"></div>
16354
16355     <div class="entry">
16356       <div class="title">
16357         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
16358       </div>
16359       <div class="date">
16360          6th June 2010
16361       </div>
16362       <div class="body">
16363         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
16364 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
16365 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
16366 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
16367 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
16368 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
16369 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
16370
16371 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
16372 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
16373 COLUMNS):</p>
16374
16375 <blockquote><pre>
16376 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
16377 previous=N
16378 PREVLEVEL=
16379 RUNLEVEL=
16380 runlevel=S
16381 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
16382 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
16383 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
16384 </pre></blockquote>
16385
16386 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
16387 script.</p>
16388
16389 <blockquote><pre>
16390 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
16391 previous=N
16392 PREVLEVEL=N
16393 RUNLEVEL=S
16394 runlevel=S
16395 </pre></blockquote>
16396
16397 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
16398 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
16399 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
16400
16401 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
16402 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
16403 choice.</p>
16404
16405       </div>
16406       <div class="tags">
16407
16408
16409         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16410
16411
16412       </div>
16413     </div>
16414     <div class="padding"></div>
16415
16416     <div class="entry">
16417       <div class="title">
16418         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
16419       </div>
16420       <div class="date">
16421          6th June 2010
16422       </div>
16423       <div class="body">
16424         <p>Via the
16425 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
16426 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
16427 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
16428 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
16429 following the standards wars of today.</p>
16430
16431       </div>
16432       <div class="tags">
16433
16434
16435         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16436
16437
16438       </div>
16439     </div>
16440     <div class="padding"></div>
16441
16442     <div class="entry">
16443       <div class="title">
16444         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
16445       </div>
16446       <div class="date">
16447          3rd June 2010
16448       </div>
16449       <div class="body">
16450         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
16451 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
16452 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
16453 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
16454 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
16455
16456 <blockquote><pre>
16457 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
16458   vendor                    count
16459   Dell Computer Corporation     1
16460     PowerEdge 1750              1
16461   IBM                           1
16462     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
16463   Intel                         2
16464   [no-dmi-info]                 3
16465 maintainer:~#
16466 </pre></blockquote>
16467
16468 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
16469 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
16470 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
16471 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
16472 option to list the individual machines.</p>
16473
16474 <p>A larger list is
16475 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
16476 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
16477 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
16478 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
16479 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
16480 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
16481 collector.</p>
16482
16483       </div>
16484       <div class="tags">
16485
16486
16487         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
16488
16489
16490       </div>
16491     </div>
16492     <div class="padding"></div>
16493
16494     <div class="entry">
16495       <div class="title">
16496         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
16497       </div>
16498       <div class="date">
16499          1st June 2010
16500       </div>
16501       <div class="body">
16502         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
16503 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
16504 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
16505 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
16506 wait.</p>
16507
16508 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
16509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
16510 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
16511 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
16512 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
16513 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
16514
16515 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
16516 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
16517 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
16518 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
16519 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
16520 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
16521 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
16522 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
16523
16524 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
16525
16526       </div>
16527       <div class="tags">
16528
16529
16530         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16531
16532
16533       </div>
16534     </div>
16535     <div class="padding"></div>
16536
16537     <div class="entry">
16538       <div class="title">
16539         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
16540       </div>
16541       <div class="date">
16542         27th May 2010
16543       </div>
16544       <div class="body">
16545         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
16546 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
16547 issues are known and should be solved:
16548
16549 <p><ul>
16550
16551 <li>The wicd package seen to
16552 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
16553 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
16554 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
16555 seem to be on the case.</li>
16556
16557 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
16558 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
16559 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
16560 maintainer is on the case.</li>
16561
16562 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
16563 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
16564 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
16565 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
16566 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
16567 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
16568 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
16569 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
16570
16571 </ul></p>
16572
16573 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
16574 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
16575 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
16576 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
16577
16578 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16579 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16580 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16581 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16582
16583 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
16584
16585       </div>
16586       <div class="tags">
16587
16588
16589         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16590
16591
16592       </div>
16593     </div>
16594     <div class="padding"></div>
16595
16596     <div class="entry">
16597       <div class="title">
16598         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
16599       </div>
16600       <div class="date">
16601         22nd May 2010
16602       </div>
16603       <div class="body">
16604         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
16605 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
16606 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
16607 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
16608
16609 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
16610 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
16611 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
16612 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
16613 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
16614 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
16615 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
16616 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
16617 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
16618 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
16619 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
16620 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
16621 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
16622 going to work.</p>
16623
16624 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
16625 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
16626 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
16627 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
16628 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
16629 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
16630 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
16631 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
16632 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
16633 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
16634 Edu.</p>
16635
16636 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
16637 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
16638 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
16639 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
16640 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
16641 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
16642
16643 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
16644 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
16645
16646       </div>
16647       <div class="tags">
16648
16649
16650         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16651
16652
16653       </div>
16654     </div>
16655     <div class="padding"></div>
16656
16657     <div class="entry">
16658       <div class="title">
16659         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
16660       </div>
16661       <div class="date">
16662         14th May 2010
16663       </div>
16664       <div class="body">
16665         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
16666 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
16667 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
16668 expected, if I am to believe the
16669 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16670 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
16671 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
16672 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
16673 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
16674 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
16675 version.</p>
16676
16677 More information about
16678 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16679 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
16680 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
16681 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16682
16683 <blockquote><pre>
16684 CONCURRENCY=none
16685 </pre></blockquote>
16686
16687 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16688 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16689 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16690 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16691
16692       </div>
16693       <div class="tags">
16694
16695
16696         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16697
16698
16699       </div>
16700     </div>
16701     <div class="padding"></div>
16702
16703     <div class="entry">
16704       <div class="title">
16705         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
16706       </div>
16707       <div class="date">
16708         14th May 2010
16709       </div>
16710       <div class="body">
16711         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
16712 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
16713 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
16714 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
16715 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
16716 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
16717 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
16718 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
16719
16720 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
16721 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
16722 this on the collector host:</p>
16723
16724 <blockquote><pre>
16725 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
16726 </pre></blockquote>
16727
16728 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
16729 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
16730
16731 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
16732 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
16733 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
16734 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
16735 written yet.</p>
16736
16737       </div>
16738       <div class="tags">
16739
16740
16741         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
16742
16743
16744       </div>
16745     </div>
16746     <div class="padding"></div>
16747
16748     <div class="entry">
16749       <div class="title">
16750         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
16751       </div>
16752       <div class="date">
16753         13th May 2010
16754       </div>
16755       <div class="body">
16756         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
16757 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
16758 has been
16759 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
16760
16761 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
16762 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
16763 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
16764 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
16765 based boot system.  Tollef is
16766 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
16767 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
16768 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
16769 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
16770 at the moment do not.</p>
16771
16772 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
16773 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
16774 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
16775 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
16776 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
16777 way forward.</p>
16778
16779 <p>In the mean time, based on the
16780 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16781 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
16782 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
16783 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
16784 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
16785 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
16786 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
16787 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
16788
16789       </div>
16790       <div class="tags">
16791
16792
16793         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16794
16795
16796       </div>
16797     </div>
16798     <div class="padding"></div>
16799
16800     <div class="entry">
16801       <div class="title">
16802         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
16803       </div>
16804       <div class="date">
16805          6th May 2010
16806       </div>
16807       <div class="body">
16808         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
16809 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
16810 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
16811 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
16812 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16813 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
16814 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16815
16816 <blockquote><pre>
16817 CONCURRENCY=makefile
16818 </pre></blockquote>
16819
16820 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
16821 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
16822 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
16823 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
16824 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
16825 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
16826 make this happen.</p>
16827
16828 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
16829 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
16830 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
16831 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
16832 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
16833
16834 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16835 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
16836 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
16837 fix the remaining issues.</p>
16838
16839 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16840 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16841 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16842 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16843
16844       </div>
16845       <div class="tags">
16846
16847
16848         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16849
16850
16851       </div>
16852     </div>
16853     <div class="padding"></div>
16854
16855     <div class="entry">
16856       <div class="title">
16857         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
16858       </div>
16859       <div class="date">
16860         27th July 2009
16861       </div>
16862       <div class="body">
16863         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
16864 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
16865 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
16866 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
16867 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
16868 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
16869 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
16870
16871 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
16872 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
16873 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
16874
16875       </div>
16876       <div class="tags">
16877
16878
16879         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16880
16881
16882       </div>
16883     </div>
16884     <div class="padding"></div>
16885
16886     <div class="entry">
16887       <div class="title">
16888         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
16889       </div>
16890       <div class="date">
16891         22nd July 2009
16892       </div>
16893       <div class="body">
16894         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
16895 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
16896 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
16897 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
16898 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
16899 the package up to date.</p>
16900
16901 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
16902 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
16903 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
16904 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
16905 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
16906 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
16907 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
16908 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
16909 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
16910 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
16911 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
16912 working on the future release.</p>
16913
16914 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
16915 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
16916
16917       </div>
16918       <div class="tags">
16919
16920
16921         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16922
16923
16924       </div>
16925     </div>
16926     <div class="padding"></div>
16927
16928     <div class="entry">
16929       <div class="title">
16930         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
16931       </div>
16932       <div class="date">
16933         24th June 2009
16934       </div>
16935       <div class="body">
16936         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
16937 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
16938 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
16939 funded
16940 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
16941 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
16942 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
16943 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
16944 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
16945 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
16946
16947 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
16948 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
16949 boot:</p>
16950
16951 <ul>
16952
16953 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
16954
16955 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
16956    clock is in UTC.</li>
16957
16958 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
16959    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16960    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
16961
16962 </ul>
16963
16964 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
16965 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
16966 Villegas</a>.
16967
16968 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
16969 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
16970 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
16971 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
16972 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
16973 using this.</p>
16974
16975 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
16976 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
16977 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
16978 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
16979 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
16980 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
16981 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
16982
16983       </div>
16984       <div class="tags">
16985
16986
16987         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16988
16989
16990       </div>
16991     </div>
16992     <div class="padding"></div>
16993
16994     <div class="entry">
16995       <div class="title">
16996         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
16997       </div>
16998       <div class="date">
16999         17th May 2009
17000       </div>
17001       <div class="body">
17002         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
17003 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
17004 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
17005 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
17006 dager siden kom
17007 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
17008 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
17009 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
17010 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
17011 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
17012
17013 <blockquote>
17014 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
17015 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
17016 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
17017 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
17018 </blockquote>
17019
17020 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
17021 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
17022 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
17023 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
17024 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
17025
17026 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
17027 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
17028 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
17029
17030       </div>
17031       <div class="tags">
17032
17033
17034         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
17035
17036
17037       </div>
17038     </div>
17039     <div class="padding"></div>
17040
17041     <div class="entry">
17042       <div class="title">
17043         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
17044       </div>
17045       <div class="date">
17046          7th May 2009
17047       </div>
17048       <div class="body">
17049         <p>Kom over
17050 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
17051 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
17052 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
17053 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
17054 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
17055 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
17056 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
17057
17058       </div>
17059       <div class="tags">
17060
17061
17062         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17063
17064
17065       </div>
17066     </div>
17067     <div class="padding"></div>
17068
17069     <div class="entry">
17070       <div class="title">
17071         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
17072       </div>
17073       <div class="date">
17074          2nd May 2009
17075       </div>
17076       <div class="body">
17077         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
17078 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
17079 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
17080 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
17081 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
17082 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
17083 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
17084 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
17085 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
17086 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
17087 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
17088 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
17089 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
17090 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
17091 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
17092 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
17093 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
17094 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
17095 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
17096 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
17097
17098 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
17099 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
17100 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
17101 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
17102 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
17103 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
17104 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
17105 betydelige.</p>
17106
17107       </div>
17108       <div class="tags">
17109
17110
17111         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17112
17113
17114       </div>
17115     </div>
17116     <div class="padding"></div>
17117
17118     <div class="entry">
17119       <div class="title">
17120         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
17121       </div>
17122       <div class="date">
17123          2nd May 2009
17124       </div>
17125       <div class="body">
17126         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
17127 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
17128 do not yet know them.</p>
17129
17130 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
17131 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
17132 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
17133 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
17134 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
17135 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
17136 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
17137 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
17138 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
17139 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
17140 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
17141
17142 <p>The second one is
17143 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
17144 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
17145 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
17146 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
17147 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
17148 and the company behind it is running
17149 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
17150 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
17151 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
17152 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
17153 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
17154 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
17155 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
17156 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
17157
17158 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
17159 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
17160 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
17161 surrounded by today.</p>
17162
17163       </div>
17164       <div class="tags">
17165
17166
17167         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17168
17169
17170       </div>
17171     </div>
17172     <div class="padding"></div>
17173
17174     <div class="entry">
17175       <div class="title">
17176         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
17177       </div>
17178       <div class="date">
17179         28th April 2009
17180       </div>
17181       <div class="body">
17182         <p>Julien Blache
17183 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
17184 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
17185 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
17186 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
17187 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
17188 properties.</p>
17189
17190       </div>
17191       <div class="tags">
17192
17193
17194         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17195
17196
17197       </div>
17198     </div>
17199     <div class="padding"></div>
17200
17201     <div class="entry">
17202       <div class="title">
17203         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
17204       </div>
17205       <div class="date">
17206         30th March 2009
17207       </div>
17208       <div class="body">
17209         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
17210 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
17211 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
17212 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
17213 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
17214 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
17215 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
17216 application.</p>
17217
17218 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
17219 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
17220 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17221 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
17222 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17223 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17224 blocked from doing so.</p>
17225
17226 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17227 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17228 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17229 requirements change.</p>
17230
17231 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
17232 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
17233 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
17234
17235       </div>
17236       <div class="tags">
17237
17238
17239         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17240
17241
17242       </div>
17243     </div>
17244     <div class="padding"></div>
17245
17246     <div class="entry">
17247       <div class="title">
17248         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
17249       </div>
17250       <div class="date">
17251         29th March 2009
17252       </div>
17253       <div class="body">
17254         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
17255 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
17256 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
17257 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
17258 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
17259 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
17260 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
17261 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
17262 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
17263 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
17264 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
17265 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
17266 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
17267 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
17268 now. :)</p>
17269
17270       </div>
17271       <div class="tags">
17272
17273
17274         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17275
17276
17277       </div>
17278     </div>
17279     <div class="padding"></div>
17280
17281     <div class="entry">
17282       <div class="title">
17283         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
17284       </div>
17285       <div class="date">
17286         29th March 2009
17287       </div>
17288       <div class="body">
17289         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
17290 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
17291 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
17292 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
17293 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
17294 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
17295
17296 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
17297 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
17298 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
17299 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
17300 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
17301 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
17302 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
17303 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
17304 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
17305 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
17306 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
17307 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
17308 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
17309
17310 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
17311 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
17312 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
17313 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
17314
17315 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
17316 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
17317
17318 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
17319 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
17320 new IETF work group?</p>
17321
17322       </div>
17323       <div class="tags">
17324
17325
17326         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17327
17328
17329       </div>
17330     </div>
17331     <div class="padding"></div>
17332
17333     <div class="entry">
17334       <div class="title">
17335         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
17336       </div>
17337       <div class="date">
17338         15th February 2009
17339       </div>
17340       <div class="body">
17341         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
17342 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
17343 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
17344 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
17345 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
17346 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
17347 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
17348 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
17349 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
17350 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
17351 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
17352 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
17353
17354       </div>
17355       <div class="tags">
17356
17357
17358         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
17359
17360
17361       </div>
17362     </div>
17363     <div class="padding"></div>
17364
17365     <div class="entry">
17366       <div class="title">
17367         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~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>
17368       </div>
17369       <div class="date">
17370          7th December 2008
17371       </div>
17372       <div class="body">
17373         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
17374 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
17375 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
17376 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
17377 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
17378 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
17379 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
17380 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
17381
17382 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
17383 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
17384 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
17385 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
17386 of these cards.</p>
17387
17388       </div>
17389       <div class="tags">
17390
17391
17392         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
17393
17394
17395       </div>
17396     </div>
17397     <div class="padding"></div>
17398
17399     <div class="entry">
17400       <div class="title">
17401         <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
17402       </div>
17403       <div class="date">
17404         25th November 2008
17405       </div>
17406       <div class="body">
17407         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
17408 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
17409 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
17410 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
17411 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
17412 notes are available on
17413 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
17414 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
17415 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
17416 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
17417 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
17418 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
17419 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
17420 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
17421 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
17422
17423 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
17424 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
17425
17426       </div>
17427       <div class="tags">
17428
17429
17430         Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17431
17432
17433       </div>
17434     </div>
17435     <div class="padding"></div>
17436
17437     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
17438     <div id="sidebar">
17439
17440
17441
17442 <h2>Archive</h2>
17443 <ul>
17444
17445 <li>2025
17446 <ul>
17447
17448 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2025/01/">January (4)</a></li>
17449
17450 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2025/02/">February (2)</a></li>
17451
17452 </ul></li>
17453
17454 <li>2024
17455 <ul>
17456
17457 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/01/">January (1)</a></li>
17458
17459 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17460
17461 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/03/">March (2)</a></li>
17462
17463 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/04/">April (3)</a></li>
17464
17465 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/05/">May (1)</a></li>
17466
17467 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/06/">June (1)</a></li>
17468
17469 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/07/">July (2)</a></li>
17470
17471 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17472
17473 </ul></li>
17474
17475 <li>2023
17476 <ul>
17477
17478 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/01/">January (3)</a></li>
17479
17480 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17481
17482 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/04/">April (2)</a></li>
17483
17484 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/05/">May (3)</a></li>
17485
17486 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/06/">June (1)</a></li>
17487
17488 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/08/">August (1)</a></li>
17489
17490 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17491
17492 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/10/">October (1)</a></li>
17493
17494 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/11/">November (4)</a></li>
17495
17496 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17497
17498 </ul></li>
17499
17500 <li>2022
17501 <ul>
17502
17503 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17504
17505 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/03/">March (3)</a></li>
17506
17507 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/04/">April (2)</a></li>
17508
17509 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17510
17511 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/07/">July (1)</a></li>
17512
17513 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17514
17515 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/10/">October (1)</a></li>
17516
17517 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17518
17519 </ul></li>
17520
17521 <li>2021
17522 <ul>
17523
17524 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/01/">January (2)</a></li>
17525
17526 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17527
17528 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/05/">May (1)</a></li>
17529
17530 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/06/">June (1)</a></li>
17531
17532 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/07/">July (3)</a></li>
17533
17534 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/08/">August (1)</a></li>
17535
17536 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17537
17538 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/10/">October (1)</a></li>
17539
17540 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17541
17542 </ul></li>
17543
17544 <li>2020
17545 <ul>
17546
17547 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/02/">February (2)</a></li>
17548
17549 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/03/">March (2)</a></li>
17550
17551 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/04/">April (2)</a></li>
17552
17553 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/05/">May (3)</a></li>
17554
17555 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17556
17557 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/07/">July (1)</a></li>
17558
17559 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17560
17561 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/10/">October (1)</a></li>
17562
17563 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/11/">November (1)</a></li>
17564
17565 </ul></li>
17566
17567 <li>2019
17568 <ul>
17569
17570 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/01/">January (4)</a></li>
17571
17572 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/02/">February (3)</a></li>
17573
17574 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/03/">March (3)</a></li>
17575
17576 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/05/">May (2)</a></li>
17577
17578 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/06/">June (5)</a></li>
17579
17580 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/07/">July (2)</a></li>
17581
17582 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/08/">August (1)</a></li>
17583
17584 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17585
17586 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/11/">November (1)</a></li>
17587
17588 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/12/">December (4)</a></li>
17589
17590 </ul></li>
17591
17592 <li>2018
17593 <ul>
17594
17595 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
17596
17597 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
17598
17599 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
17600
17601 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
17602
17603 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17604
17605 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (5)</a></li>
17606
17607 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17608
17609 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (3)</a></li>
17610
17611 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (5)</a></li>
17612
17613 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/11/">November (2)</a></li>
17614
17615 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/12/">December (4)</a></li>
17616
17617 </ul></li>
17618
17619 <li>2017
17620 <ul>
17621
17622 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
17623
17624 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
17625
17626 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
17627
17628 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
17629
17630 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
17631
17632 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
17633
17634 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
17635
17636 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
17637
17638 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
17639
17640 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17641
17642 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
17643
17644 </ul></li>
17645
17646 <li>2016
17647 <ul>
17648
17649 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
17650
17651 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
17652
17653 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
17654
17655 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
17656
17657 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
17658
17659 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17660
17661 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
17662
17663 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
17664
17665 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
17666
17667 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
17668
17669 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
17670
17671 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
17672
17673 </ul></li>
17674
17675 <li>2015
17676 <ul>
17677
17678 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
17679
17680 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
17681
17682 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
17683
17684 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
17685
17686 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
17687
17688 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
17689
17690 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
17691
17692 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
17693
17694 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
17695
17696 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
17697
17698 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
17699
17700 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
17701
17702 </ul></li>
17703
17704 <li>2014
17705 <ul>
17706
17707 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
17708
17709 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
17710
17711 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
17712
17713 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
17714
17715 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
17716
17717 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17718
17719 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
17720
17721 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
17722
17723 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
17724
17725 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
17726
17727 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17728
17729 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
17730
17731 </ul></li>
17732
17733 <li>2013
17734 <ul>
17735
17736 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
17737
17738 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
17739
17740 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
17741
17742 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
17743
17744 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17745
17746 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
17747
17748 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
17749
17750 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17751
17752 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
17753
17754 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
17755
17756 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
17757
17758 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
17759
17760 </ul></li>
17761
17762 <li>2012
17763 <ul>
17764
17765 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
17766
17767 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
17768
17769 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
17770
17771 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
17772
17773 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
17774
17775 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
17776
17777 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
17778
17779 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
17780
17781 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
17782
17783 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
17784
17785 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
17786
17787 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17788
17789 </ul></li>
17790
17791 <li>2011
17792 <ul>
17793
17794 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
17795
17796 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
17797
17798 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
17799
17800 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
17801
17802 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
17803
17804 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17805
17806 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
17807
17808 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
17809
17810 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
17811
17812 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17813
17814 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17815
17816 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17817
17818 </ul></li>
17819
17820 <li>2010
17821 <ul>
17822
17823 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
17824
17825 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17826
17827 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
17828
17829 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
17830
17831 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17832
17833 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
17834
17835 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
17836
17837 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
17838
17839 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
17840
17841 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
17842
17843 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
17844
17845 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
17846
17847 </ul></li>
17848
17849 <li>2009
17850 <ul>
17851
17852 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
17853
17854 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
17855
17856 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
17857
17858 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
17859
17860 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17861
17862 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
17863
17864 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
17865
17866 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17867
17868 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17869
17870 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17871
17872 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17873
17874 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
17875
17876 </ul></li>
17877
17878 <li>2008
17879 <ul>
17880
17881 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
17882
17883 <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17884
17885 </ul></li>
17886
17887 </ul>
17888
17889
17890
17891 <h2>Tags</h2>
17892 <ul>
17893
17894  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (19)</a></li>
17895
17896  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
17897
17898  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
17899
17900  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
17901
17902  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/betalkontant">betalkontant (9)</a></li>
17903
17904  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (13)</a></li>
17905
17906  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
17907
17908  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
17909
17910  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (3)</a></li>
17911
17912  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (208)</a></li>
17913
17914  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (159)</a></li>
17915
17916  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (9)</a></li>
17917
17918  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (11)</a></li>
17919
17920  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (18)</a></li>
17921
17922  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (33)</a></li>
17923
17924  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
17925
17926  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english (470)</a></li>
17927
17928  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
17929
17930  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (14)</a></li>
17931
17932  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (34)</a></li>
17933
17934  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
17935
17936  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (20)</a></li>
17937
17938  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
17939
17940  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (43)</a></li>
17941
17942  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (21)</a></li>
17943
17944  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (23)</a></li>
17945
17946  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (6)</a></li>
17947
17948  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
17949
17950  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (5)</a></li>
17951
17952  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
17953
17954  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc (8)</a></li>
17955
17956  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (3)</a></li>
17957
17958  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
17959
17960  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/madewithcc">madewithcc (3)</a></li>
17961
17962  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
17963
17964  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (47)</a></li>
17965
17966  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (15)</a></li>
17967
17968  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5 (27)</a></li>
17969
17970  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (326)</a></li>
17971
17972  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (200)</a></li>
17973
17974  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (42)</a></li>
17975
17976  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
17977
17978  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch (4)</a></li>
17979
17980  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (76)</a></li>
17981
17982  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (114)</a></li>
17983
17984  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (4)</a></li>
17985
17986  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
17987
17988  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
17989
17990  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
17991
17992  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (17)</a></li>
17993
17994  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
17995
17996  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (7)</a></li>
17997
17998  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
17999
18000  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (60)</a></li>
18001
18002  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
18003
18004  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
18005
18006  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (79)</a></li>
18007
18008  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (7)</a></li>
18009
18010  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (14)</a></li>
18011
18012  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (65)</a></li>
18013
18014  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (6)</a></li>
18015
18016  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
18017
18018  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
18019
18020  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (23)</a></li>
18021
18022  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video (81)</a></li>
18023
18024  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
18025
18026  <li><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web (42)</a></li>
18027
18028 </ul>
18029
18030
18031     </div>
18032     <p style="text-align: right">
18033  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
18034 </p>
18035
18036   </body>
18037 </html>