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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          6th December 2012
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
  32 Oslo</a>, we use the
  33 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
  34 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
  35 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
  36 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
  37 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
  38 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
  39 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
  40 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
  41 Python.</p>
  42
  43 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
  44 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
  45 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
  46 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
  47 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
  48 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
  49
  50 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
  51 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
  52 user currently logged in:</p>
  53
  54 <blockquote><pre>
  55 #!/usr/bin/env python
  56 import getpass
  57 import xmlrpclib
  58 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
  59 username = getpass.getuser()
  60 password = getpass.getpass()
  61 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
  62 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
  63 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
  64 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
  65 result = server.logout(sessionid)
  66 print result
  67 </pre></blockquote>
  68
  69 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
  70 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
  71
  72       </div>
  73       <div class="tags">
  74
  75
  76         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
  77
  78
  79       </div>
  80     </div>
  81     <div class="padding"></div>
  82
  83     <div class="entry">
  84       <div class="title">
  85         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
  86       </div>
  87       <div class="date">
  88         17th November 2012
  89       </div>
  90       <div class="body">
  91         <p>While working on a
  92 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
  93 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
  94 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
  95 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
  96 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
  97 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
  98
  99 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
 100 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
 101 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
 102 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
 103 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
 104 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
 105 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
 106 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
 107 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
 108 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
 109 arguments.</p>
 110
 111 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
 112 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
 113 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
 114 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
 115 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
 116 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
 117 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
 118 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
 119
 120 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
 121 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
 122 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
 123 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
 124 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
 125 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
 126 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
 127 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
 128 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
 129 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
 130 correct right holder.</p>
 131
 132 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
 133 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
 134 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
 135 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
 136 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
 137 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
 138 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
 139 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
 140 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
 141 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
 142 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
 143 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
 144 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
 145 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
 146
 147 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
 148 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
 149 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
 150
 151 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
 152 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
 153
 154       </div>
 155       <div class="tags">
 156
 157
 158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 159
 160
 161       </div>
 162     </div>
 163     <div class="padding"></div>
 164
 165     <div class="entry">
 166       <div class="title">
 167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
 168       </div>
 169       <div class="date">
 170         14th November 2012
 171       </div>
 172       <div class="body">
 173         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
 174 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
 175 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
 176 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
 177 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
 178 the people behind the German
 179 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
 180 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
 181 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
 182
 183 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 184
 185 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
 186 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
 187 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
 188
 189 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
 190 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
 191 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
 192 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
 193 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
 194 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
 195
 196 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
 197 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
 198 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
 199 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
 200 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
 201 relationship management and the communication processes in the
 202 project.</p>
 203
 204 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
 205 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
 206 and a yoga teacher.</p>
 207
 208 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 209 project?</strong></p>
 210
 211 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
 212
 213 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
 214 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
 215 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
 216 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
 217 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
 218 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
 219 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
 220 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
 221 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
 222 parents.</p>
 223
 224 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
 225 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
 226 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
 227 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
 228 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
 229 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
 230 Germany.</p>
 231
 232 <p>For information about our school project you can read
 233 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
 234 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
 235
 236 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 237 Edu?</strong></p>
 238
 239 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
 240 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
 241
 242 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
 243 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
 244 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
 245 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
 246 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
 247 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
 248 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
 249 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
 250 teachers, parents...</p>
 251
 252 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 253 Edu?</strong></p>
 254
 255 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
 256 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
 257
 258 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
 259 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
 260 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
 261 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
 262 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
 263
 264 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
 265 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
 266 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
 267 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
 268 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
 269 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
 270 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
 271
 272 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 273
 274 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
 275 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
 276 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
 277 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
 278
 279 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 280 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 281
 282 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
 283 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
 284 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
 285 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
 286 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
 287
 288 <ul>
 289
 290 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
 291 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
 292 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
 293
 294 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
 295 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
 296 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
 297 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
 298 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
 299 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
 300 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
 301
 302 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
 303 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
 304 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
 305 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
 306
 307 </ul>
 308
 309       </div>
 310       <div class="tags">
 311
 312
 313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 314
 315
 316       </div>
 317     </div>
 318     <div class="padding"></div>
 319
 320     <div class="entry">
 321       <div class="title">
 322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
 323       </div>
 324       <div class="date">
 325          4th November 2012
 326       </div>
 327       <div class="body">
 328         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
 329 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
 330 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
 331 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
 332 see how a member of the bitcoin community
 333 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
 334 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
 335 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
 336 competition.  My thoughts go to the
 337 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
 338 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
 339 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
 340 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
 341 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
 342
 343 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
 344 that the community already seem to have
 345 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
 346 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
 347 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
 348 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
 349 wealth is available.</p>
 350
 351       </div>
 352       <div class="tags">
 353
 354
 355         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 356
 357
 358       </div>
 359     </div>
 360     <div class="padding"></div>
 361
 362     <div class="entry">
 363       <div class="title">
 364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
 365       </div>
 366       <div class="date">
 367         26th October 2012
 368       </div>
 369       <div class="body">
 370         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
 371 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
 372 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
 373 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
 374 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
 375 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
 376 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
 377 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
 378 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
 379 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
 380 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
 381 it every time.</p>
 382
 383 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
 384 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
 385 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
 386 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
 387 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
 388 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
 389 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
 390 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
 391 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
 392 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
 393 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
 394 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
 395
 396 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
 397 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
 398 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
 399 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
 400 article: First the unplanned outage:
 401
 402 <blockquote><pre>
 403 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
 404 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
 405 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
 406 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
 407 Duration:    40 minutes
 408 Scope:       Exchange 2003
 409 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
 410              a cluster failover.
 411
 412 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
 413              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
 414 Technician:  [xxx]
 415 </pre></blockquote>
 416
 417 Next the planned outage:
 418
 419 <blockquote><pre>
 420 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
 421 Severity:    Major (Planned)
 422 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
 423 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
 424 Duration:    10 hours
 425 Scope:       H2 Transport
 426 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
 427              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
 428              4510s.
 429 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
 430              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
 431              connectivity.
 432 Technician:  [xxx]
 433 </pre></blockquote>
 434
 435 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
 436 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
 437 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
 438 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
 439 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
 440 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
 441 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
 442
 443 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
 444 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
 445 university too.  We do register
 446 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
 447 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
 448 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
 449 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
 450 for other sites to consider too?</p>
 451
 452       </div>
 453       <div class="tags">
 454
 455
 456         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 457
 458
 459       </div>
 460     </div>
 461     <div class="padding"></div>
 462
 463     <div class="entry">
 464       <div class="title">
 465         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
 466       </div>
 467       <div class="date">
 468         22nd October 2012
 469       </div>
 470       <div class="body">
 471         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
 472 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
 473 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
 474 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
 475 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
 476 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
 477 background information is available in Norwegian from
 478 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
 479 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
 480 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
 481 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
 482 willing to
 483 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
 484 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
 485 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
 486 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
 487 sounded like
 488 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
 489 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
 490 later.</p>
 491
 492 <p>And thought this action is
 493 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
 494 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
 495 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
 496 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
 497 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
 498 rights.</p>
 499
 500 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
 501 unacceptable terms.  For example
 502 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
 503 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
 504 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
 505 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
 506 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
 507
 508 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
 509 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
 510 restored the account of the user, as reported by
 511 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
 512 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
 513 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
 514 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
 515 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
 516 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
 517 reading two opinions from
 518 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
 519 Phipps</a> and
 520 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
 521 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
 522 details about the original story.</p>
 523
 524       </div>
 525       <div class="tags">
 526
 527
 528         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
 529
 530
 531       </div>
 532     </div>
 533     <div class="padding"></div>
 534
 535     <div class="entry">
 536       <div class="title">
 537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
 538       </div>
 539       <div class="date">
 540         18th October 2012
 541       </div>
 542       <div class="body">
 543         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
 544 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
 545 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
 546 across a marvellous drawing by
 547 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
 548 visualising some of what is going on.
 549
 550 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
 551 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
 552
 553 <blockquote>
 554 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 555 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
 556 </blockquote>
 557
 558 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
 559 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
 560 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
 561 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
 562 Panopticom</a>, and can not help help to think that we are slowly
 563 transforming our society to a huge Panopticom on our own.</p>
 564
 565       </div>
 566       <div class="tags">
 567
 568
 569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 570
 571
 572       </div>
 573     </div>
 574     <div class="padding"></div>
 575
 576     <div class="entry">
 577       <div class="title">
 578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
 579       </div>
 580       <div class="date">
 581         12th October 2012
 582       </div>
 583       <div class="body">
 584         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
 585 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
 586 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
 587 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
 588 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
 589 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
 590 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
 591 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
 592 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
 593 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
 594 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
 595 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
 596 matter".</p>
 597
 598 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
 599 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
 600 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
 601 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
 602 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
 603 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
 604 to argue its side.</p>
 605
 606 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
 607 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
 608 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
 609 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
 610
 611 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
 612 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
 613 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
 614
 615       </div>
 616       <div class="tags">
 617
 618
 619         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
 620
 621
 622       </div>
 623     </div>
 624     <div class="padding"></div>
 625
 626     <div class="entry">
 627       <div class="title">
 628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
 629       </div>
 630       <div class="date">
 631          3rd October 2012
 632       </div>
 633       <div class="body">
 634         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
 635 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
 636 the computer science book collection available in his local
 637 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
 638 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
 639 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
 640 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
 641 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
 642 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
 643 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
 644 recently published books.</p>
 645
 646 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
 647 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
 648 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
 649 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
 650 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
 651 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
 652 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
 653 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
 654 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
 655 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
 656 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
 657 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
 658 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
 659 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
 660 for the library that evening.</p>
 661
 662 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
 663 going to know that for example
 664 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
 665 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
 666 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
 667 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
 668 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
 669 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
 670 book right away.</p>
 671
 672       </div>
 673       <div class="tags">
 674
 675
 676         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 677
 678
 679       </div>
 680     </div>
 681     <div class="padding"></div>
 682
 683     <div class="entry">
 684       <div class="title">
 685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
 686       </div>
 687       <div class="date">
 688         23rd September 2012
 689       </div>
 690       <div class="body">
 691         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
 692 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
 693 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 694 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
 695 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
 696 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
 697
 698 When I started, I
 699 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
 700 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
 701 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
 702 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
 703 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
 704 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
 705 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
 706
 707 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
 708
 709 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
 710 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
 711 the project files currently available from
 712 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 713
 714 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 715 the updated
 716 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
 717 and
 718 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 719 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 720 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 721 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
 722
 723       </div>
 724       <div class="tags">
 725
 726
 727         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 728
 729
 730       </div>
 731     </div>
 732     <div class="padding"></div>
 733
 734     <div class="entry">
 735       <div class="title">
 736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
 737       </div>
 738       <div class="date">
 739         17th September 2012
 740       </div>
 741       <div class="body">
 742         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
 743 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
 744 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
 745 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
 746 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
 747 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
 748 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
 749
 750 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 751
 752 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
 753 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
 754 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
 755 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
 756 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
 757 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
 758 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
 759 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
 760 training is anyway very important</p>
 761
 762 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
 763 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
 764 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
 765 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
 766 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
 767
 768 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 769 project?</strong></p>
 770
 771 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
 772 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
 773 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
 774 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
 775 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
 776 hole.</p>
 777
 778 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 779 Edu?</strong></p>
 780
 781 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
 782 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
 783 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
 784 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
 785 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
 786 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
 787 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
 788 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
 789 hassle.</p>
 790
 791 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 792 Edu?</strong></p>
 793
 794 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
 795 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
 796 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
 797 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
 798 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
 799 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
 800 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
 801 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
 802
 803 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 804
 805 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
 806 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
 807 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
 808 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
 809 has the same...</p>
 810
 811 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
 812 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
 813 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
 814 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
 815
 816 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 817 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 818
 819 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
 820 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
 821 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
 822
 823 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
 824 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
 825 don't.</p>
 826
 827 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
 828 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
 829 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
 830 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
 831 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
 832 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
 833 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
 834
 835       </div>
 836       <div class="tags">
 837
 838
 839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 840
 841
 842       </div>
 843     </div>
 844     <div class="padding"></div>
 845
 846     <div class="entry">
 847       <div class="title">
 848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
 849       </div>
 850       <div class="date">
 851         15th September 2012
 852       </div>
 853       <div class="body">
 854         <p>After the
 855 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
 856 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
 857 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
 858 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
 859 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
 860 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
 861 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
 862 was
 863 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
 864 formal working group should be formed.</p>
 865
 866 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
 867 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
 868 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
 869 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
 870 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
 871 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
 872 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
 873 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
 874
 875 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
 876 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
 877 IETF.</p>
 878
 879       </div>
 880       <div class="tags">
 881
 882
 883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 884
 885
 886       </div>
 887     </div>
 888     <div class="padding"></div>
 889
 890     <div class="entry">
 891       <div class="title">
 892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
 893       </div>
 894       <div class="date">
 895         12th September 2012
 896       </div>
 897       <div class="body">
 898         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
 899 publication of of
 900 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
 901 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
 902 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
 903 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
 904 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
 905 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
 906 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
 907 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
 908 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
 909 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
 910
 911 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
 912 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
 913 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
 914 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
 915
 916 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
 917 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
 918
 919       </div>
 920       <div class="tags">
 921
 922
 923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 924
 925
 926       </div>
 927     </div>
 928     <div class="padding"></div>
 929
 930     <div class="entry">
 931       <div class="title">
 932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="date">
 935          7th September 2012
 936       </div>
 937       <div class="body">
 938         <p>As I
 939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
 940 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
 941 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
 942 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
 943 repository for the project</a>.</p>
 944
 945 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
 946 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
 947 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
 948 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
 949
 950 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
 951 PostScript formats at
 952 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
 953 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
 954
 955       </div>
 956       <div class="tags">
 957
 958
 959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 960
 961
 962       </div>
 963     </div>
 964     <div class="padding"></div>
 965
 966     <div class="entry">
 967       <div class="title">
 968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
 969       </div>
 970       <div class="date">
 971         23rd August 2012
 972       </div>
 973       <div class="body">
 974         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
 975 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
 976 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
 977 revisit the great site
 978 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
 979 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
 980 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
 981
 982       </div>
 983       <div class="tags">
 984
 985
 986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 987
 988
 989       </div>
 990     </div>
 991     <div class="padding"></div>
 992
 993     <div class="entry">
 994       <div class="title">
 995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
 996       </div>
 997       <div class="date">
 998         17th August 2012
 999       </div>
1000       <div class="body">
1001         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
1002 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1003 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1004 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
1005 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
1006 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
1007 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
1008 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
1009 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
1010 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
1011 summer I
1012 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
1013 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
1014 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
1015
1016 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
1017 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
1018 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
1019 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
1020 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
1021 progress:</p>
1022
1023 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
1024
1025 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
1026 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
1027 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
1028 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
1029 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
1030 english version of the docbook source.</p>
1031
1032 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
1033 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
1034 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
1035 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
1036 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
1037 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
1038 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
1039 project files currently available from <a
1040 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1041
1042 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1043 the updated
1044 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
1045 and
1046 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1047 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
1048 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1049 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
1050
1051       </div>
1052       <div class="tags">
1053
1054
1055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1056
1057
1058       </div>
1059     </div>
1060     <div class="padding"></div>
1061
1062     <div class="entry">
1063       <div class="title">
1064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
1065       </div>
1066       <div class="date">
1067         10th August 2012
1068       </div>
1069       <div class="body">
1070         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
1071 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
1072 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
1073 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
1074 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
1075 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
1076 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
1077 case for the language
1078 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
1079 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
1080
1081 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
1082 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
1083 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
1084 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
1085 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
1086
1087 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
1088 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
1089 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
1090 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
1091 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
1092 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
1093 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
1094 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
1095 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
1096 alias for 'nb'.</p>
1097
1098 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
1099 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
1100 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
1101 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
1102 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
1103 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
1104 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
1105 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
1106 at the same time. :(</p>
1107
1108 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
1109 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
1110 processors. :(</p>
1111
1112 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
1113
1114       </div>
1115       <div class="tags">
1116
1117
1118         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1119
1120
1121       </div>
1122     </div>
1123     <div class="padding"></div>
1124
1125     <div class="entry">
1126       <div class="title">
1127         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
1128       </div>
1129       <div class="date">
1130         31st July 2012
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="body">
1133         <p>I tried to send this text to the
1134 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
1135 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
1136 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
1137 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
1138 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
1139 out.</p>
1140
1141 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
1142 learning curve at the moment.</p>
1143
1144 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
1145 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
1146 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
1147 available from
1148 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
1149 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
1150 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
1151 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
1152 Squeeze.</p>
1153
1154 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
1155 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
1156 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
1157 problems.</p>
1158
1159 <ul>
1160
1161 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
1162    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
1163    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
1164    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
1165    index references spanning several pages (See
1166    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
1167    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
1168    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
1169
1170 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
1171    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
1172    #683163</a>).</li>
1173
1174 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
1175    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
1176    footnote and text body, see
1177    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
1178    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
1179    refs listed are not right).</li>
1180
1181 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
1182
1183 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
1184    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
1185
1186 </ul>
1187
1188 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
1189 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
1190 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
1191
1192 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
1193
1194       </div>
1195       <div class="tags">
1196
1197
1198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1199
1200
1201       </div>
1202     </div>
1203     <div class="padding"></div>
1204
1205     <div class="entry">
1206       <div class="title">
1207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
1208       </div>
1209       <div class="date">
1210         21st July 2012
1211       </div>
1212       <div class="body">
1213         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
1214 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
1215 norwegian version</a> of the book
1216 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1217 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
1218 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
1219 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
1220 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1221
1222 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
1223 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
1224 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
1225 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
1226 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
1227 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
1228 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
1229 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
1230 print. :)</p>
1231
1232 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
1233 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
1234 language.</p>
1235
1236       </div>
1237       <div class="tags">
1238
1239
1240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1241
1242
1243       </div>
1244     </div>
1245     <div class="padding"></div>
1246
1247     <div class="entry">
1248       <div class="title">
1249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
1250       </div>
1251       <div class="date">
1252         16th July 2012
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="body">
1255         <p>I am currently working on a
1256 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
1257 to translate</a> the book
1258 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
1259 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
1260 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
1261 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
1262 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
1263 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
1264 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1265
1266 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
1267 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
1268 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
1269 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
1270 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
1271 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
1272 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
1273 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
1274 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
1275
1276       </div>
1277       <div class="tags">
1278
1279
1280         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1281
1282
1283       </div>
1284     </div>
1285     <div class="padding"></div>
1286
1287     <div class="entry">
1288       <div class="title">
1289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
1290       </div>
1291       <div class="date">
1292          9th July 2012
1293       </div>
1294       <div class="body">
1295         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1296 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
1297 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
1298 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
1299 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
1300 to adjust and scale the just released
1301 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1302 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
1303 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
1304
1305 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1306
1307 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
1308 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
1309 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
1310 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
1311 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
1312 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
1313 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
1314 perspective when working with IT.</p>
1315
1316 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1317 project?</strong></p>
1318
1319 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
1320 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
1321 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
1322 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
1323 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
1324 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
1325
1326 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1327 Edu?</strong></p>
1328
1329 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
1330 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
1331 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
1332 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
1333 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
1334 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
1335 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
1336 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
1337 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
1338 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
1339 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
1340 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
1341 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
1342 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
1343 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
1344 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
1345 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
1346 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
1347 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
1348 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
1349 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
1350 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
1351 quicker to update.
1352
1353 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1354 Edu?</strong></p>
1355
1356 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
1357 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
1358 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
1359 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
1360 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
1361 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
1362
1363 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
1364 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
1365 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
1366 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
1367 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
1368 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
1369 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
1370 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
1371 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
1372 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
1373 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
1374 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
1375 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
1376 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
1377 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
1378
1379 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
1380 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
1381 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
1382 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
1383 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
1384 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
1385 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
1386 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
1387
1388 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
1389 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
1390 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
1391 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
1392 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
1393 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
1394 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
1395 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
1396 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
1397 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
1398 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
1399 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
1400 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
1401 sound file.</p>
1402
1403 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
1404 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
1405 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
1406 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
1407 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
1408 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
1409 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
1410 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
1411 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
1412
1413 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1414
1415 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
1416 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
1417 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
1418 )</p>
1419
1420 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1421 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1422
1423 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
1424 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
1425 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
1426 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
1427 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
1428 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
1429 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
1430 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
1431 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
1432 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
1433 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
1434 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
1435 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
1436 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
1437 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
1438
1439 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
1440 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
1441 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
1442 management with Airtime</a>,
1443 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
1444 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
1445 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
1446 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
1447 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
1448
1449       </div>
1450       <div class="tags">
1451
1452
1453         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1454
1455
1456       </div>
1457     </div>
1458     <div class="padding"></div>
1459
1460     <div class="entry">
1461       <div class="title">
1462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
1463       </div>
1464       <div class="date">
1465          8th July 2012
1466       </div>
1467       <div class="body">
1468         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
1469 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
1470 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
1471 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
1472 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
1473 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
1474 Steinberg in his blog post
1475 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
1476 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
1477 spending of your tax money.</p>
1478
1479 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
1480 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
1481 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
1482 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
1483 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
1484 purchases.</p>
1485
1486       </div>
1487       <div class="tags">
1488
1489
1490         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1491
1492
1493       </div>
1494     </div>
1495     <div class="padding"></div>
1496
1497     <div class="entry">
1498       <div class="title">
1499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
1500       </div>
1501       <div class="date">
1502          7th July 2012
1503       </div>
1504       <div class="body">
1505         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1506 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
1507 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
1508 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
1509 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
1510 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
1511 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
1512 receive.  The software is
1513
1514 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
1515 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
1516 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
1517 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
1518 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
1519 Windows</a>.</p>
1520
1521 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
1522 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
1523
1524 <p><ul>
1525
1526   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
1527     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
1528
1529   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
1530     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
1531     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
1532     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
1533     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
1534     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
1535     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
1536     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
1537     </li>
1538
1539   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
1540     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
1541
1542   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
1543     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
1544
1545   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
1546     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
1547
1548   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
1549
1550   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
1551     formats </li>
1552
1553   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
1554     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
1555     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
1556     (as separate sets)</li>
1557
1558   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
1559     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
1560     percentage)</li>
1561
1562   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
1563     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
1564     memory):
1565     <ul>
1566       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
1567       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
1568       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
1569       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
1570       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
1571       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
1572       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
1573       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
1574       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
1575       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
1576           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
1577           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
1578           activity)</li>
1579       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
1580       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
1581     </ul></li>
1582
1583   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
1584     <ul>
1585       <li>Break periods</li>
1586       <li>For teacher(s):
1587         <ul>
1588           <li>Not available periods</li>
1589           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
1590           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
1591           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
1592           <li>Min hours daily</li>
1593           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
1594
1595           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
1596             days per week</li>
1597         </ul></li>
1598       <li>For students (sets):
1599         <ul>
1600           <li>Not available periods</li>
1601           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
1602           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
1603           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
1604           <li>Min hours daily</li>
1605           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
1606
1607           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
1608             days per week</li>
1609         </ul></li>
1610       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
1611         <ul>
1612           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
1613           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
1614           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
1615           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
1616           <li>End(s) students day</li>
1617           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
1618           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
1619             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
1620           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
1621           <li>Not overlapping</li>
1622           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
1623           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
1624         </ul></li>
1625     </ul></li>
1626
1627   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
1628     <ul>
1629       <li>Room not available periods</li>
1630       <li>For teacher(s):
1631         <ul>
1632           <li>Home room(s)</li>
1633           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
1634           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
1635         </ul>
1636       </li>
1637
1638       <li>For students (sets):
1639         <ul>
1640           <li>Home room(s)</li>
1641           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
1642           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
1643         </ul>
1644       </li>
1645       <li>Preferred room(s):
1646         <ul>
1647           <li>For a subject</li>
1648           <li>For an activity tag</li>
1649           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
1650           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
1651         </ul>
1652       </li>
1653
1654       <li>For a set of activities:
1655         <ul>
1656           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
1657         </ul>
1658       </li>
1659     </ul>
1660   </li>
1661 </ul></p>
1662
1663 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
1664 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
1665 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
1666 manually, check it out.
1667
1668 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
1669 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
1670 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
1671 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
1672 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
1673 section</a>.</p>
1674
1675       </div>
1676       <div class="tags">
1677
1678
1679         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1680
1681
1682       </div>
1683     </div>
1684     <div class="padding"></div>
1685
1686     <div class="entry">
1687       <div class="title">
1688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
1689       </div>
1690       <div class="date">
1691          3rd July 2012
1692       </div>
1693       <div class="body">
1694         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
1695 project (Norwegian version of
1696 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
1697 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
1698 a problem with the municipalities using
1699 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
1700 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
1701 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
1702 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
1703 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
1704 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
1705 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
1706 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
1707 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
1708 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
1709 the From: header.</p>
1710
1711 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
1712 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
1713 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
1714 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
1715 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
1716 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
1717 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
1718 behaviour.</p>
1719
1720 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
1721 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
1722 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
1723 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
1724 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
1725 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
1726 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
1727
1728       </div>
1729       <div class="tags">
1730
1731
1732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1733
1734
1735       </div>
1736     </div>
1737     <div class="padding"></div>
1738
1739     <div class="entry">
1740       <div class="title">
1741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
1742       </div>
1743       <div class="date">
1744         26th June 2012
1745       </div>
1746       <div class="body">
1747         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
1748 another interview with the people behind
1749 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
1750 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
1751 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
1752 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
1753 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
1754 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1755 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1756
1757 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1758
1759 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
1760 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
1761 ICT in schools</p>
1762
1763 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1764 project?</strong></p>
1765
1766 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
1767 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
1768 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
1769 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
1770
1771 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1772 Edu?</strong></p>
1773
1774 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
1775 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
1776 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
1777 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
1778
1779 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1780 Edu?</strong></p>
1781
1782 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
1783 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
1784 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
1785 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
1786 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
1787 technologies in school.</p>
1788
1789 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1790
1791 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
1792 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
1793 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
1794
1795 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1796 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1797
1798 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
1799 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
1800 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
1801 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
1802
1803 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
1804 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
1805 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
1806
1807 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
1808 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
1809 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
1810 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
1811 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
1812 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
1813 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
1814 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
1815 working there.</p>
1816
1817       </div>
1818       <div class="tags">
1819
1820
1821         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1822
1823
1824       </div>
1825     </div>
1826     <div class="padding"></div>
1827
1828     <div class="entry">
1829       <div class="title">
1830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1831       </div>
1832       <div class="date">
1833         24th June 2012
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="body">
1836         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1837 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1838 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1839 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1840 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1841 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1842 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1843 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1844 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1845 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1846 missing in my book.</p>
1847
1848 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1849 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1850 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1851 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1852 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1853 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1854 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1855
1856       </div>
1857       <div class="tags">
1858
1859
1860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1861
1862
1863       </div>
1864     </div>
1865     <div class="padding"></div>
1866
1867     <div class="entry">
1868       <div class="title">
1869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
1870       </div>
1871       <div class="date">
1872         11th June 2012
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="body">
1875         <p>During my work on
1876 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
1877 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
1878 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
1879 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
1880 explanation.</p>
1881
1882 <p><ul>
1883
1884 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
1885 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
1886 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
1887 system depend on tasksel tasks in
1888 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
1889 installation.</li>
1890
1891 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
1892 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
1893 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
1894 at least try to enable it for these services:
1895 <ul>
1896
1897   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
1898     quotas.</li>
1899   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
1900   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
1901   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
1902   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
1903   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
1904
1905 </ul></li>
1906
1907 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
1908 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
1909 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
1910 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
1911
1912 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
1913 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
1914 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
1915
1916 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
1917 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
1918 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
1919 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
1920 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
1921 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
1922
1923 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
1924 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
1925 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
1926 in Wheezy.
1927
1928 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
1929 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
1930 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
1931
1932 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
1933 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
1934 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
1935 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
1936
1937 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
1938 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
1939 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
1940 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
1941
1942 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
1943 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
1944 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
1945
1946 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
1947 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
1948 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
1949
1950 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
1951 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
1952 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
1953 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
1954 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
1955
1956 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
1957 <ul>
1958
1959 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
1960 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
1961 <li>and probably more?</li>
1962 </ul></li>
1963
1964 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
1965 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
1966 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
1967 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
1968 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
1969 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
1970 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
1971 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
1972
1973
1974 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
1975 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
1976 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
1977 use.</li>
1978
1979 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
1980 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
1981 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
1982 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
1983 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
1984
1985 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
1986 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
1987 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
1988 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
1989 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
1990 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
1991
1992 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
1993 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
1994 There are at least three implementations,
1995 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
1996 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
1997 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
1998 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
1999 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
2000 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
2001 given room.</li>
2002
2003 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
2004 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
2005 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
2006 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
2007 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
2008 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
2009 investigated.</li>
2010
2011 </ul></p>
2012
2013 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
2014 version.</p>
2015
2016       </div>
2017       <div class="tags">
2018
2019
2020         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2021
2022
2023       </div>
2024     </div>
2025     <div class="padding"></div>
2026
2027     <div class="entry">
2028       <div class="title">
2029         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
2030       </div>
2031       <div class="date">
2032          9th June 2012
2033       </div>
2034       <div class="body">
2035         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
2036 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
2037 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
2038 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
2039 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
2040 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
2041 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
2042 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
2043 be willing to pay for.</p>
2044
2045 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
2046 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
2047 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
2048 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
2049 Orwell</a>.</p>
2050
2051       </div>
2052       <div class="tags">
2053
2054
2055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2056
2057
2058       </div>
2059     </div>
2060     <div class="padding"></div>
2061
2062     <div class="entry">
2063       <div class="title">
2064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
2065       </div>
2066       <div class="date">
2067          6th June 2012
2068       </div>
2069       <div class="body">
2070         <p>A few days ago
2071 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
2072 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
2073 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
2074 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
2075 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
2076 code for HP, Dell and IBM
2077 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
2078 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
2079 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
2080 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
2081 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
2082
2083 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
2084 output:
2085
2086 <blockquote><pre>
2087 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
2088 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
2089 %
2090 </pre></blockquote>
2091
2092 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
2093 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
2094 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
2095
2096       </div>
2097       <div class="tags">
2098
2099
2100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2101
2102
2103       </div>
2104     </div>
2105     <div class="padding"></div>
2106
2107     <div class="entry">
2108       <div class="title">
2109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
2110       </div>
2111       <div class="date">
2112          2nd June 2012
2113       </div>
2114       <div class="body">
2115         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
2116 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2117 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
2118 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
2119 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2120 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2121
2122 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2123
2124 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
2125 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
2126 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
2127 by Angela).</p>
2128
2129 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
2130 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
2131 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
2132 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
2133 becoming an osteopath.</p>
2134
2135 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
2136 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
2137 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
2138 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
2139 skills with communication skills.</p>
2140
2141 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2142 project?</strong></p>
2143
2144 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
2145 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
2146 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
2147 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
2148 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
2149
2150 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
2151 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
2152 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
2153 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
2154 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
2155 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
2156 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
2157 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
2158 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
2159
2160 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
2161 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
2162 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
2163
2164 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
2165
2166 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
2167 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
2168 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
2169 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
2170 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
2171 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
2172 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
2173 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
2174 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
2175 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
2176 point.</p>
2177
2178 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
2179 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
2180 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
2181 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
2182 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
2183 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
2184
2185 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
2186 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
2187 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
2188 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
2189 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
2190 spare time.</p>
2191
2192 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
2193 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
2194 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
2195 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
2196 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
2197
2198 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
2199 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
2200 avoidance do exist.</p>
2201
2202 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
2203 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
2204 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
2205 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
2206 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
2207 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
2208 and probably a gain for all.</p>
2209
2210 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2211 Edu?</strong></p>
2212
2213 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
2214 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
2215 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
2216 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
2217 project communication, honest communication within the group of
2218 developers, etc.</p>
2219
2220 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2221 Edu?</strong></p>
2222
2223 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
2224
2225 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
2226 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
2227 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
2228 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
2229 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
2230 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
2231 contribute).</p>
2232
2233 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
2234 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
2235 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
2236 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
2237 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
2238 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
2239 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
2240 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
2241 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
2242 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
2243
2244 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2245
2246 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
2247
2248 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
2249 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
2250 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
2251
2252 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
2253 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
2254 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
2255 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
2256
2257 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
2258 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
2259 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
2260 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
2261 whiteboard.</p>
2262
2263 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
2264
2265 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2266 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2267
2268 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
2269 enrol people.</p>
2270
2271       </div>
2272       <div class="tags">
2273
2274
2275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2276
2277
2278       </div>
2279     </div>
2280     <div class="padding"></div>
2281
2282     <div class="entry">
2283       <div class="title">
2284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
2285       </div>
2286       <div class="date">
2287          1st June 2012
2288       </div>
2289       <div class="body">
2290         <p>A few years ago I wrote
2291 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
2292 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
2293 I have learned from colleges here at the
2294 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
2295 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
2296 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
2297 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
2298 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
2299
2300 <p><pre>
2301 use strict;
2302 use warnings;
2303 use SOAP::Lite;
2304 use Data::Dumper;
2305 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
2306 my $App = 'test';
2307 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
2308 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
2309 my $s = SOAP::Lite
2310     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
2311     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
2312     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
2313     ;
2314 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
2315     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
2316     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
2317     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
2318 );
2319 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
2320 </pre></p>
2321
2322 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
2323
2324 <p><pre>
2325 $VAR1 = {
2326           'Asset' => {
2327                      'Entitlements' => {
2328                                        'EntitlementData' => [
2329                                                             {
2330                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
2331                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
2332                                                               'Provider' => '',
2333                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
2334                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
2335                                                             },
2336                                                             {
2337                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
2338                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
2339                                                               'Provider' => '',
2340                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
2341                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
2342                                                             },
2343                                                             {
2344                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
2345                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
2346                                                               'Provider' => '',
2347                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
2348                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
2349                                                             }
2350                                                           ]
2351                                      },
2352                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
2353                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
2354                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
2355                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
2356                                           'Buid' => '2323',
2357                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
2358                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
2359                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
2360                                         }
2361                    }
2362         };
2363 </pre></p>
2364
2365 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
2366 service outside the
2367 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
2368 documentation</a>, and according to
2369 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
2370 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
2371 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
2372
2373 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
2374 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
2375
2376       </div>
2377       <div class="tags">
2378
2379
2380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2381
2382
2383       </div>
2384     </div>
2385     <div class="padding"></div>
2386
2387     <div class="entry">
2388       <div class="title">
2389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
2390       </div>
2391       <div class="date">
2392         31st May 2012
2393       </div>
2394       <div class="body">
2395         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
2396 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
2397 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
2398 running Debian Squeeze, where
2399 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
2400 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
2401 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
2402 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
2403 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
2404 another day.</p>
2405
2406 <p>After calibration, I get a
2407 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
2408 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
2409 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
2410 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
2411 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
2412 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
2413 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
2414 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
2415 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
2416 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
2417 and a simple</p>
2418
2419 <p><pre>
2420 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
2421 </pre></p>
2422
2423 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
2424 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
2425 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
2426 enough for now.</p>
2427
2428       </div>
2429       <div class="tags">
2430
2431
2432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2433
2434
2435       </div>
2436     </div>
2437     <div class="padding"></div>
2438
2439     <div class="entry">
2440       <div class="title">
2441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
2442       </div>
2443       <div class="date">
2444         27th May 2012
2445       </div>
2446       <div class="body">
2447         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
2448 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2449 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
2450 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
2451 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
2452 since then, helping to make sure the
2453 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2454 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
2455
2456 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2457
2458 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
2459 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
2460 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
2461 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
2462 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
2463 our computer network.</p>
2464
2465 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
2466 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
2467 (4 months).</p>
2468
2469 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2470 project?</strong></p>
2471
2472 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
2473 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
2474 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
2475 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
2476 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
2477 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
2478 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
2479 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
2480 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
2481 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
2482 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
2483 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
2484 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
2485 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
2486
2487 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2488 Edu?</strong></p>
2489
2490 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
2491 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
2492 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
2493 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
2494 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
2495 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
2496 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
2497 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
2498
2499 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2500 Edu?</strong></p>
2501
2502 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
2503 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
2504 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
2505 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
2506 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
2507 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
2508 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
2509 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
2510 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
2511 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
2512 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
2513 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
2514
2515 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2516
2517 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
2518 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
2519 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
2520
2521 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2522 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2523
2524 <p><ol>
2525
2526 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
2527 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
2528 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
2529 developing.</li>
2530
2531 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
2532 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
2533 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
2534 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
2535 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
2536
2537 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
2538 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
2539 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
2540
2541 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
2542 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
2543 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
2544 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
2545
2546 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
2547 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
2548 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
2549
2550 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
2551
2552 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
2553 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
2554 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
2555 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
2556
2557 </ol></p>
2558
2559       </div>
2560       <div class="tags">
2561
2562
2563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2564
2565
2566       </div>
2567     </div>
2568     <div class="padding"></div>
2569
2570     <div class="entry">
2571       <div class="title">
2572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
2573       </div>
2574       <div class="date">
2575         26th May 2012
2576       </div>
2577       <div class="body">
2578         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
2579 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
2580 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
2581 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
2582 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
2583
2584 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
2585 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
2586 comment:</p>
2587
2588 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
2589 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
2590 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
2591 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
2592 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
2593 </blockquote></p>
2594
2595 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
2596 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
2597 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
2598 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
2599 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
2600 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
2601 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
2602 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
2603 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
2604 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
2605 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
2606 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
2607 of wasted effort.</p>
2608
2609 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
2610 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
2611 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
2612
2613 <p>See
2614 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
2615 and
2616 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
2617 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
2618 </blockquote></p>
2619
2620       </div>
2621       <div class="tags">
2622
2623
2624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2625
2626
2627       </div>
2628     </div>
2629     <div class="padding"></div>
2630
2631     <div class="entry">
2632       <div class="title">
2633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
2634       </div>
2635       <div class="date">
2636         18th May 2012
2637       </div>
2638       <div class="body">
2639         <p>In january, I
2640 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
2641 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
2642 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
2643 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
2644 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
2645 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
2646 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
2647 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
2648 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
2649 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
2650
2651 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
2652 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
2653 drivers. :)</p>
2654
2655       </div>
2656       <div class="tags">
2657
2658
2659         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2660
2661
2662       </div>
2663     </div>
2664     <div class="padding"></div>
2665
2666     <div class="entry">
2667       <div class="title">
2668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
2669       </div>
2670       <div class="date">
2671         13th May 2012
2672       </div>
2673       <div class="body">
2674         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
2675 publish another interview with the people behind
2676 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
2677 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
2678 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
2679 details get right before release.
2680
2681 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2682
2683 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
2684 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
2685 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
2686 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
2687 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
2688 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
2689 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
2690 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
2691
2692 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
2693 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
2694 home since 2006.</p>
2695
2696 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2697 project?</strong></p>
2698
2699 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
2700 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
2701 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
2702 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
2703 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
2704 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
2705
2706 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
2707 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
2708 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
2709 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
2710 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
2711 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
2712 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
2713 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
2714 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
2715 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
2716 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
2717 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
2718 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
2719 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
2720 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
2721 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
2722
2723 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2724 Edu?</strong></p>
2725
2726 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
2727 for me as today.</p>
2728
2729 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
2730
2731 <p><ul>
2732
2733 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
2734 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
2735
2736 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
2737 cost.</li>
2738
2739 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
2740 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
2741 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
2742 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
2743 server</li>
2744
2745 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
2746 school.</li>
2747
2748 </ul></p>
2749
2750 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
2751 came up in this way:</p>
2752
2753 <p><ul>
2754
2755 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
2756 now.</li>
2757
2758 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
2759 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
2760 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
2761
2762 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
2763 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
2764 interfaces used in the past.</li>
2765
2766 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
2767 different needs.</li>
2768
2769 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
2770
2771 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
2772 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
2773 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
2774
2775 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
2776 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
2777
2778 </ul></p>
2779
2780 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2781 Edu?</strong></p>
2782
2783 <p><ul>
2784
2785 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
2786 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
2787 whole municipality areas.</li>
2788
2789 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
2790 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
2791 politicians.</li>
2792
2793 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
2794
2795 </ul></p>
2796
2797 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2798
2799 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
2800 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
2801 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
2802 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
2803 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
2804 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
2805
2806 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
2807 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
2808 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
2809 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
2810 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
2811
2812 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2813 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2814
2815 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
2816 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
2817 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
2818
2819       </div>
2820       <div class="tags">
2821
2822
2823         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2824
2825
2826       </div>
2827     </div>
2828     <div class="padding"></div>
2829
2830     <div class="entry">
2831       <div class="title">
2832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
2833       </div>
2834       <div class="date">
2835         30th April 2012
2836       </div>
2837       <div class="body">
2838         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
2839 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
2840
2841 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
2842 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
2843 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
2844 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
2845 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
2846 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
2847 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
2848 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
2849 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
2850 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
2851 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
2852 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
2853 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
2854 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
2855 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
2856 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
2857
2858 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
2859 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
2860 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
2861 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
2862 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
2863 finally found a Danish supplier
2864 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
2865 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
2866 days ago.</p>
2867
2868 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
2869 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
2870 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
2871 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
2872 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
2873 toys.</p>
2874
2875       </div>
2876       <div class="tags">
2877
2878
2879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2880
2881
2882       </div>
2883     </div>
2884     <div class="padding"></div>
2885
2886     <div class="entry">
2887       <div class="title">
2888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
2889       </div>
2890       <div class="date">
2891         26th April 2012
2892       </div>
2893       <div class="body">
2894         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
2895 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
2896 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
2897 that the video editor application included with
2898 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
2899 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
2900 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
2901
2902 <p><blockquote>
2903 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
2904 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
2905 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
2906 </blockquote></p>
2907
2908 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
2909
2910 <p><blockquote>
2911 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
2912 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
2913 </blockquote></p>
2914
2915 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
2916 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
2917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
2918 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
2919 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
2920 video.  AMR is
2921 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
2922 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
2923 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
2924 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
2925 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
2926 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
2927 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
2928
2929 <p>I know why I prefer
2930 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
2931 standards</a> also for video.</p>
2932
2933       </div>
2934       <div class="tags">
2935
2936
2937         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2938
2939
2940       </div>
2941     </div>
2942     <div class="padding"></div>
2943
2944     <div class="entry">
2945       <div class="title">
2946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
2947       </div>
2948       <div class="date">
2949         19th April 2012
2950       </div>
2951       <div class="body">
2952         <p>Here in Norway, the
2953 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
2954 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
2955 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
2956 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
2957 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
2958 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
2959 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
2960 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
2961 on the same level.</p>
2962
2963 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
2964 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
2965 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
2966 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
2967 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
2968 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
2969 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
2970 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
2971 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
2972 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
2973 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
2974 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
2975 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
2976 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
2977 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
2978 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
2979 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
2980 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
2981
2982 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
2983 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
2984 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
2985 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
2986 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
2987 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
2988 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
2989 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
2990
2991 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
2992 from Simon Phipps
2993 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
2994 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
2995
2996 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
2997 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
2998 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
2999 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
3000 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
3001 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
3002 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
3003 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
3004 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
3005
3006       </div>
3007       <div class="tags">
3008
3009
3010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3011
3012
3013       </div>
3014     </div>
3015     <div class="padding"></div>
3016
3017     <div class="entry">
3018       <div class="title">
3019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
3020       </div>
3021       <div class="date">
3022         15th April 2012
3023       </div>
3024       <div class="body">
3025         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3026 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
3027 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
3028 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
3029 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
3030 up in the recently released
3031 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
3032 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3033
3034 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3035
3036 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
3037 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
3038 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
3039 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
3040 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
3041 information technology and science/technology.</p>
3042
3043 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3044 project?</strong></p>
3045
3046 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
3047 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
3048 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
3049 contributing.</p>
3050
3051 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3052 Edu?</strong></p>
3053
3054 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
3055 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
3056 Debian Project!</p>
3057
3058 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3059 Edu?</strong></p>
3060
3061 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
3062 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
3063 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
3064 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
3065 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
3066 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
3067 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
3068
3069 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
3070 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
3071
3072 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3073
3074 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
3075 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
3076 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
3077 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
3078
3079 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3080 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3081
3082 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
3083 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
3084 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
3085 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
3086 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
3087 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
3088 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
3089
3090 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
3091 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
3092 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
3093 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
3094 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
3095 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
3096 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
3097 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
3098
3099       </div>
3100       <div class="tags">
3101
3102
3103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3104
3105
3106       </div>
3107     </div>
3108     <div class="padding"></div>
3109
3110     <div class="entry">
3111       <div class="title">
3112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
3113       </div>
3114       <div class="date">
3115          8th April 2012
3116       </div>
3117       <div class="body">
3118         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
3119 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
3120 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
3121 contributor to the
3122 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
3123 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
3124
3125 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3126
3127 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
3128 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
3129
3130 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3131 project?</strong></p>
3132
3133 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
3134 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
3135 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
3136 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
3137 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
3138 "localisation".</p>
3139
3140 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3141 Edu?</strong></p>
3142
3143 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3144 Edu?</strong></p>
3145
3146 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
3147 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
3148 education system.</p>
3149
3150 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
3151 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
3152 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
3153 money on the latest hardware.</p>
3154
3155 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3156
3157 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
3158 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
3159 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
3160
3161 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3162 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3163
3164 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
3165 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
3166 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
3167
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="tags">
3170
3171
3172         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3173
3174
3175       </div>
3176     </div>
3177     <div class="padding"></div>
3178
3179     <div class="entry">
3180       <div class="title">
3181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
3182       </div>
3183       <div class="date">
3184          6th April 2012
3185       </div>
3186       <div class="body">
3187         <p>Recently I have spent time with
3188 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
3189 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3190 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
3191 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
3192 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
3193 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
3194 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
3195 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
3196
3197 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
3198 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
3199 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
3200 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
3201 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
3202 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
3203 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
3204 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
3205
3206 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
3207 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
3208 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
3209 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
3210 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
3211 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
3212 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
3213 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
3214
3215 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
3216 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
3217 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
3218 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
3219 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
3220 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
3221 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
3222 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
3223 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
3224 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
3225
3226 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
3227 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
3228 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
3229 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
3230
3231 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
3232 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
3233
3234       </div>
3235       <div class="tags">
3236
3237
3238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3239
3240
3241       </div>
3242     </div>
3243     <div class="padding"></div>
3244
3245     <div class="entry">
3246       <div class="title">
3247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
3248       </div>
3249       <div class="date">
3250          5th April 2012
3251       </div>
3252       <div class="body">
3253         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
3254 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
3255 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
3256 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
3257 for schools.  Check out his article
3258 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
3259 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
3260
3261       </div>
3262       <div class="tags">
3263
3264
3265         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3266
3267
3268       </div>
3269     </div>
3270     <div class="padding"></div>
3271
3272     <div class="entry">
3273       <div class="title">
3274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
3275       </div>
3276       <div class="date">
3277          1st April 2012
3278       </div>
3279       <div class="body">
3280         <p>Germany is a core area for the
3281 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3282 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
3283 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
3284
3285 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3286
3287 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
3288 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
3289 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
3290 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
3291 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
3292 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
3293 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
3294 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
3295
3296 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
3297 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
3298 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
3299 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
3300 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
3301 the end of April this year.</p>
3302
3303 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3304 project?</strong></p>
3305
3306 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
3307 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
3308 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
3309 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
3310 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
3311 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
3312 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
3313 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
3314 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
3315 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
3316 Skolelinux.</p>
3317
3318 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
3319 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
3320 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
3321 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
3322 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
3323 the admin teachers.</p>
3324
3325 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3326 Edu?</strong></p>
3327
3328 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
3329 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
3330 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
3331
3332 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
3333 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
3334 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
3335 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
3336 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
3337
3338 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3339 Edu?</strong></p>
3340
3341 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
3342
3343 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3344
3345 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
3346 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
3347 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
3348 LibreOffice.</p>
3349
3350 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3351 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3352
3353 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
3354 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
3355 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
3356
3357       </div>
3358       <div class="tags">
3359
3360
3361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3362
3363
3364       </div>
3365     </div>
3366     <div class="padding"></div>
3367
3368     <div class="entry">
3369       <div class="title">
3370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
3371       </div>
3372       <div class="date">
3373         25th March 2012
3374       </div>
3375       <div class="body">
3376         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
3377
3378 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
3379 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
3380 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
3381 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
3382 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
3383 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
3384 and download as a
3385 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
3386 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
3387
3388 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
3389   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
3390     <p>Download video as
3391       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
3392 </video></p>
3393
3394       </div>
3395       <div class="tags">
3396
3397
3398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3399
3400
3401       </div>
3402     </div>
3403     <div class="padding"></div>
3404
3405     <div class="entry">
3406       <div class="title">
3407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
3408       </div>
3409       <div class="date">
3410         19th March 2012
3411       </div>
3412       <div class="body">
3413         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3414 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
3415 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
3416 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
3417 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
3418
3419 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3420
3421 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
3422 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
3423 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
3424 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
3425 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
3426 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
3427 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
3428 installations.</p>
3429
3430 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3431 project?</strong></p>
3432
3433 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
3434 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
3435 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
3436 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
3437 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
3438 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
3439 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
3440 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
3441 these things we decided to try it.</p>
3442
3443 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3444 Edu?</strong></p>
3445
3446 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
3447 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
3448 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
3449 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
3450 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
3451 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
3452 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
3453 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
3454
3455 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3456 Edu?</strong></p>
3457
3458 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
3459 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
3460 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
3461 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
3462 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
3463
3464 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3465
3466 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
3467 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
3468 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
3469 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
3470 that counts...)</p>
3471
3472 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3473 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3474
3475 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
3476 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
3477 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
3478 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
3479 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
3480 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
3481 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
3482 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
3483 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
3484 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
3485 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
3486
3487 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
3488 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
3489 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
3490
3491       </div>
3492       <div class="tags">
3493
3494
3495         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3496
3497
3498       </div>
3499     </div>
3500     <div class="padding"></div>
3501
3502     <div class="entry">
3503       <div class="title">
3504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
3505       </div>
3506       <div class="date">
3507         16th March 2012
3508       </div>
3509       <div class="body">
3510         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
3511 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
3512 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
3513 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
3514
3515 <ol>
3516
3517 <li>The documentation is written in a
3518 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
3519 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
3520 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
3521 docbook XML.</li>
3522
3523 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
3524 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
3525 with the translated text.</li>
3526
3527 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
3528 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
3529 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
3530 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
3531 images.</li>
3532
3533 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
3534 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
3535
3536 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
3537 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
3538
3539 </ol>
3540
3541 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
3542 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
3543 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
3544 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
3545 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
3546
3547 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
3548 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
3549 package</a>.</p>
3550
3551       </div>
3552       <div class="tags">
3553
3554
3555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3556
3557
3558       </div>
3559     </div>
3560     <div class="padding"></div>
3561
3562     <div class="entry">
3563       <div class="title">
3564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
3565       </div>
3566       <div class="date">
3567         11th March 2012
3568       </div>
3569       <div class="body">
3570         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
3571 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
3572 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3573 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
3574 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
3575 you have not done so already.</p>
3576
3577 <p>I plan to present the new version at
3578 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
3579 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
3580 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
3581
3582       </div>
3583       <div class="tags">
3584
3585
3586         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3587
3588
3589       </div>
3590     </div>
3591     <div class="padding"></div>
3592
3593     <div class="entry">
3594       <div class="title">
3595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
3596       </div>
3597       <div class="date">
3598          9th March 2012
3599       </div>
3600       <div class="body">
3601         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
3602 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
3603 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3604 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
3605 more international audience.</p>
3606
3607 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3608 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
3609 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
3610 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
3611 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
3612 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
3613 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
3614
3615
3616 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3617
3618 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
3619 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
3620 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
3621 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
3622 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
3623 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
3624 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
3625 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
3626 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
3627 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
3628 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
3629
3630 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3631 project?</strong></p>
3632
3633 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
3634 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
3635 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
3636 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
3637 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
3638 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
3639 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
3640 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
3641 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
3642 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
3643 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
3644 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
3645 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
3646
3647 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3648 Edu?</strong></p>
3649
3650 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
3651 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
3652 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
3653 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
3654 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
3655 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
3656 Japan.</p>
3657
3658 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3659 Edu?</strong></p>
3660
3661 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
3662 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
3663 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
3664 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
3665 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
3666 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
3667 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
3668 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
3669 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
3670 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
3671 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
3672 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
3673 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
3674 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
3675 help.</p>
3676
3677 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3678
3679 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
3680 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
3681 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
3682 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
3683 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
3684 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
3685 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
3686 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
3687 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
3688 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
3689 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
3690
3691 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3692 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3693
3694 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
3695 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
3696 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
3697 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
3698 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
3699 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
3700 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
3701 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
3702 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
3703 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
3704 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
3705 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
3706
3707       </div>
3708       <div class="tags">
3709
3710
3711         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3712
3713
3714       </div>
3715     </div>
3716     <div class="padding"></div>
3717
3718     <div class="entry">
3719       <div class="title">
3720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
3721       </div>
3722       <div class="date">
3723          7th March 2012
3724       </div>
3725       <div class="body">
3726         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
3727
3728 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
3729 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
3730 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
3731 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
3732 download as a
3733 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
3734 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
3735
3736 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
3737   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
3738     <p>Download video as
3739       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
3740 </video></p>
3741
3742       </div>
3743       <div class="tags">
3744
3745
3746         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3747
3748
3749       </div>
3750     </div>
3751     <div class="padding"></div>
3752
3753     <div class="entry">
3754       <div class="title">
3755         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3756       </div>
3757       <div class="date">
3758          4th March 2012
3759       </div>
3760       <div class="body">
3761         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
3762 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3763 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3764 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
3765 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
3766 need a software solution for your school.</p>
3767
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="tags">
3770
3771
3772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3773
3774
3775       </div>
3776     </div>
3777     <div class="padding"></div>
3778
3779     <div class="entry">
3780       <div class="title">
3781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="date">
3784          3rd March 2012
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="body">
3787         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3788 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
3789 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
3790 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
3791 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
3792 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
3793 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
3794 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
3795 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
3796 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
3797 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
3798 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
3799 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
3800 year...</p>
3801
3802 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
3803 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
3804 name,
3805 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
3806 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
3807 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
3808 mean). I've been following
3809 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
3810 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
3811 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
3812 Check it out. :)</p>
3813
3814       </div>
3815       <div class="tags">
3816
3817
3818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3819
3820
3821       </div>
3822     </div>
3823     <div class="padding"></div>
3824
3825     <div class="entry">
3826       <div class="title">
3827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3828       </div>
3829       <div class="date">
3830         27th February 2012
3831       </div>
3832       <div class="body">
3833         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
3834 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3835 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
3836 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
3837 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
3838 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
3839 need a software solution for your school.</p>
3840
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="tags">
3843
3844
3845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3846
3847
3848       </div>
3849     </div>
3850     <div class="padding"></div>
3851
3852     <div class="entry">
3853       <div class="title">
3854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3855       </div>
3856       <div class="date">
3857         19th February 2012
3858       </div>
3859       <div class="body">
3860         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
3861 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
3862 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3863 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3864 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
3865 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
3866 solution for your school.</p>
3867
3868       </div>
3869       <div class="tags">
3870
3871
3872         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3873
3874
3875       </div>
3876     </div>
3877     <div class="padding"></div>
3878
3879     <div class="entry">
3880       <div class="title">
3881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
3882       </div>
3883       <div class="date">
3884         14th February 2012
3885       </div>
3886       <div class="body">
3887         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
3888 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
3889 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
3890 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
3891 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
3892 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
3893 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
3894 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
3895 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
3896
3897 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
3898 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
3899 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
3900 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
3901 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
3902
3903 <blockquote><pre>
3904 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
3905 do
3906     printf "Failed disk $d: "
3907     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
3908 done
3909 </blockquote></pre>
3910
3911 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
3912 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
3913
3914 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
3915
3916 <blockquote><pre>
3917 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3918 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3919 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
3920 </blockquote></pre>
3921
3922 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
3923 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
3924 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
3925 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
3926 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
3927 mounted inside my box.</p>
3928
3929 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
3930 Software RAID in the
3931 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
3932 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
3933 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
3934 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
3935 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
3936 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
3937
3938       </div>
3939       <div class="tags">
3940
3941
3942         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
3943
3944
3945       </div>
3946     </div>
3947     <div class="padding"></div>
3948
3949     <div class="entry">
3950       <div class="title">
3951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3952       </div>
3953       <div class="date">
3954         13th February 2012
3955       </div>
3956       <div class="body">
3957         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
3958 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
3959 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
3960 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
3961 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
3962 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
3963 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
3964 change the global proxy setting by editing
3965 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
3966 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
3967
3968 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
3969 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
3970 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
3971
3972 <blockquote><pre>
3973 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
3974 {
3975    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
3976        isPlainHostName(host) ||
3977        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
3978       return "DIRECT";
3979    else
3980       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
3981 }
3982 </pre></blockquote>
3983
3984 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
3985
3986 <blockquote><pre>
3987 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3988 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3989 </pre></blockquote>
3990
3991 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
3992 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
3993 would be used for
3994 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
3995 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
3996 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
3997 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
3998 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
3999 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
4000 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
4001 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
4002 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
4003 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
4004
4005 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
4006 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
4007 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
4008 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
4009 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
4010 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
4011
4012 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
4013 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
4014 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
4015 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
4016 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
4017 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
4018 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
4019 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
4020 the network setup changes.</p>
4021
4022 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
4023 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
4024 draft</a> and a
4025 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
4026 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
4027
4028       </div>
4029       <div class="tags">
4030
4031
4032         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4033
4034
4035       </div>
4036     </div>
4037     <div class="padding"></div>
4038
4039     <div class="entry">
4040       <div class="title">
4041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
4042       </div>
4043       <div class="date">
4044          5th February 2012
4045       </div>
4046       <div class="body">
4047         <p>Since the Lenny version of
4048 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
4049 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
4050 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
4051 in the morning.  This is done using the
4052 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
4053
4054 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
4055 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
4056 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
4057 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
4058 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
4059 the
4060 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
4061 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
4062 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
4063 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
4064 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
4065
4066 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
4067 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
4068 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
4069 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
4070 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
4071 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
4072 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
4073
4074 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
4075 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
4076 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
4077 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
4078 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
4079
4080       </div>
4081       <div class="tags">
4082
4083
4084         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4085
4086
4087       </div>
4088     </div>
4089     <div class="padding"></div>
4090
4091     <div class="entry">
4092       <div class="title">
4093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
4094       </div>
4095       <div class="date">
4096          4th February 2012
4097       </div>
4098       <div class="body">
4099         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
4100 publish the third beta version of
4101 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
4102 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
4103 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
4104 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
4105 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
4106 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
4107 on the project announcement list.</p>
4108
4109 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
4110 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
4111
4112 <ul>
4113
4114 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
4115   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
4116   the installation.</li>
4117
4118 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
4119   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
4120
4121 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
4122   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
4123   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
4124
4125 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
4126   for the local system administrator is created during installation
4127   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
4128   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
4129   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
4130   up to date on the system.</li>
4131
4132 </ul>
4133
4134 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
4135 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
4136 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
4137 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
4138
4139 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
4140 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
4141 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
4142 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
4143 will see you there?</p>
4144
4145       </div>
4146       <div class="tags">
4147
4148
4149         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4150
4151
4152       </div>
4153     </div>
4154     <div class="padding"></div>
4155
4156     <div class="entry">
4157       <div class="title">
4158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
4159       </div>
4160       <div class="date">
4161         27th January 2012
4162       </div>
4163       <div class="body">
4164         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
4165 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
4166 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
4167 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
4168 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
4169 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
4170 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
4171
4172 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
4173 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
4174 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
4175 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
4176 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
4177 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
4178 not taken care of by this.</p>
4179
4180 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
4181 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
4182 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
4183 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
4184 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
4185 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
4186 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
4187 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
4188 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
4189 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
4190 firmware packages.</p>
4191
4192 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
4193 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
4194 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
4195 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
4196 initrd with extra firmware, the
4197 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
4198 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
4199 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
4200
4201 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
4202 network cards working.  For this,
4203 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
4204 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
4205 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
4206
4207 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
4208 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
4209 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
4210
4211 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
4212 try.</p>
4213
4214       </div>
4215       <div class="tags">
4216
4217
4218         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4219
4220
4221       </div>
4222     </div>
4223     <div class="padding"></div>
4224
4225     <div class="entry">
4226       <div class="title">
4227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
4228       </div>
4229       <div class="date">
4230         25th January 2012
4231       </div>
4232       <div class="body">
4233         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
4234 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
4235 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
4236 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
4237 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
4238
4239 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
4240 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
4241 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
4242 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
4243 this is done, log on to the central server and run
4244 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
4245 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
4246 will look similar to this:</p>
4247
4248 <p><blockquote><pre>
4249 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
4250 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
4251 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
4252
4253 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
4254
4255 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4256 enter password: *******
4257 %
4258 </pre></blockquote></p>
4259
4260 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
4261 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
4262 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
4263 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
4264 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
4265 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
4266 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
4267 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
4268 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
4269 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
4270 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
4271 automatically.</p>
4272
4273 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
4274 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
4275
4276 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
4277 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
4278 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
4279
4280       </div>
4281       <div class="tags">
4282
4283
4284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
4285
4286
4287       </div>
4288     </div>
4289     <div class="padding"></div>
4290
4291     <div class="entry">
4292       <div class="title">
4293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
4294       </div>
4295       <div class="date">
4296         10th January 2012
4297       </div>
4298       <div class="body">
4299         <p>In the Squeeze version of
4300 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
4301 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
4302 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
4303 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
4304 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
4305 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
4306 first time.</p>
4307
4308 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
4309 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
4310 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
4311 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
4312
4313 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
4314 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
4315 new setting.</p>
4316
4317 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
4318 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
4319 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
4320
4321       </div>
4322       <div class="tags">
4323
4324
4325         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4326
4327
4328       </div>
4329     </div>
4330     <div class="padding"></div>
4331
4332     <div class="entry">
4333       <div class="title">
4334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
4335       </div>
4336       <div class="date">
4337          7th January 2012
4338       </div>
4339       <div class="body">
4340         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
4341 the second beta version of
4342 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
4343 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
4344 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
4345 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
4346 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
4347 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
4348 on the project announcement list.</p>
4349
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="tags">
4352
4353
4354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4355
4356
4357       </div>
4358     </div>
4359     <div class="padding"></div>
4360
4361     <div class="entry">
4362       <div class="title">
4363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
4364       </div>
4365       <div class="date">
4366          3rd January 2012
4367       </div>
4368       <div class="body">
4369         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
4370 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
4371 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
4372 interesting.</p>
4373
4374 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
4375 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
4376 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
4377 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
4378 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
4379 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
4380 wrap up its tasks.</p>
4381
4382 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
4383 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
4384 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
4385 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
4386 because I was typing.</P>
4387
4388 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
4389 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
4390 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
4391 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
4392 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
4393 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
4394 generate entropy.</p>
4395
4396 <p>The fix is in
4397 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
4398 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
4399 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
4400 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
4401
4402       </div>
4403       <div class="tags">
4404
4405
4406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4407
4408
4409       </div>
4410     </div>
4411     <div class="padding"></div>
4412
4413     <div class="entry">
4414       <div class="title">
4415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
4416       </div>
4417       <div class="date">
4418         21st November 2011
4419       </div>
4420       <div class="body">
4421         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
4422 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
4423 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4424 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
4425 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4426 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4427 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4428 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4429 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4430 the tools to do so.</p>
4431
4432 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4433 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
4434 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4435 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
4436
4437 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4438 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
4439 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4440 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4441 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4442 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4443 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4444 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
4445
4446 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4447 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4448 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
4449
4450 <p><pre>
4451 #!/usr/bin/perl
4452 use strict;
4453 use warnings;
4454 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4455 BEGIN {
4456     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4457     my %rhelmodules = (
4458         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
4459         );
4460     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4461         eval "use $module;";
4462         if ($@) {
4463             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4464             system("yum install -y $pkg");
4465             eval "use $module;";
4466         }
4467     }
4468 }
4469 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
4470
4471 upgrade_dell();
4472
4473 exit 0;
4474
4475 sub run_firmware_script {
4476     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4477     unless ($script) {
4478         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
4479         exit 1
4480     }
4481     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
4482
4483     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4484         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
4485     } else {
4486         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
4487     }
4488 }
4489
4490 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4491     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4492     # Run firmware packages
4493     for my $dir (@dirs) {
4494         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
4495         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
4496         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4497             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4498             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
4499         }
4500         closedir $dh;
4501     }
4502 }
4503
4504 sub download {
4505     my $url = shift;
4506     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
4507     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
4508 }
4509
4510 sub upgrade_dell {
4511     my @dirs;
4512     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4513     chomp $product;
4514
4515     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4516
4517         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4518         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
4519
4520         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4521             CLEANUP => 1
4522             );
4523         chdir($tmpdir);
4524         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
4525         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
4526         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
4527         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4528         my $fwopts = "-q";
4529         if (@paths) {
4530             for my $url (@paths) {
4531                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4532             }
4533             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4534         } else {
4535             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4536             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4537         }
4538         chdir('/');
4539     } else {
4540         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4541         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4542     }
4543 }
4544
4545 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4546     my $path = shift;
4547     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
4548     download($url);
4549 }
4550
4551 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4552 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4553 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4554 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4555     my $filename = shift;
4556
4557     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4558     chomp $product;
4559     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4560
4561     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4562
4563     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4564     my @paths;
4565     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4566         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
4567         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
4568         my $oscode;
4569         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
4570             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
4571         } else {
4572             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
4573         }
4574         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4575         {
4576             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
4577         }
4578     }
4579     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4580         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
4581
4582         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4583         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4584
4585         my $cpath = $component->{path};
4586         for my $path (@paths) {
4587             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4588                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4589             }
4590         }
4591     }
4592     return @paths;
4593 }
4594 </pre>
4595
4596 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4597 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4598 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4599 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4600 outdated.</p>
4601
4602       </div>
4603       <div class="tags">
4604
4605
4606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4607
4608
4609       </div>
4610     </div>
4611     <div class="padding"></div>
4612
4613     <div class="entry">
4614       <div class="title">
4615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
4616       </div>
4617       <div class="date">
4618          7th October 2011
4619       </div>
4620       <div class="body">
4621         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
4622 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
4623 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
4624 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
4625 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
4626 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
4627 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
4628 models.</p>
4629
4630 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
4631 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
4632 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
4633 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
4634
4635 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
4636 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
4637 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
4638 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
4639 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
4640 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
4641 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
4642 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
4643 distributed.</p>
4644
4645 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
4646
4647 <ul>
4648
4649 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
4650   other relevant equipment.</li>
4651
4652 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
4653
4654 </ul>
4655
4656 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
4657 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
4658 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
4659 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
4660 books available.</p>
4661
4662 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
4663 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
4664 libraries. :)</p>
4665
4666       </div>
4667       <div class="tags">
4668
4669
4670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4671
4672
4673       </div>
4674     </div>
4675     <div class="padding"></div>
4676
4677     <div class="entry">
4678       <div class="title">
4679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
4680       </div>
4681       <div class="date">
4682         17th September 2011
4683       </div>
4684       <div class="body">
4685         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
4686 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
4687 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
4688 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
4689 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
4690 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
4691 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
4692 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
4693
4694 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
4695
4696 <blockquote><pre>
4697 #!/bin/sh
4698 # apt-get install lsdvd
4699 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
4700 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
4701 </pre></blockquote>
4702
4703 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
4704 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
4705 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
4706 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
4707
4708 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
4709 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
4710 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
4711 back as an ISO.
4712
4713 <blockquote><pre>
4714 #!/bin/sh
4715 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
4716 set -e
4717 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
4718 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
4719 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
4720 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
4721 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
4722 </pre></blockquote>
4723
4724 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
4725
4726 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
4727 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
4728 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
4729 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
4730 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
4731
4732 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
4733 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
4734 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
4735 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
4736 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
4737 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
4738
4739       </div>
4740       <div class="tags">
4741
4742
4743         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4744
4745
4746       </div>
4747     </div>
4748     <div class="padding"></div>
4749
4750     <div class="entry">
4751       <div class="title">
4752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
4753       </div>
4754       <div class="date">
4755          4th August 2011
4756       </div>
4757       <div class="body">
4758         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4759 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4760 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
4761 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4762 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
4763 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4764 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
4765 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4766 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
4767
4768 <p><blockquote>
4769 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4770 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4771 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4772 </blockquote></p>
4773
4774 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4775 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4776 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4777 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4778 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4779 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4780 hard to explain.</p>
4781
4782 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4783 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
4784 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
4785 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4786 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4787 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4788 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4789 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4790 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4791 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4792 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4793 mode).</p>
4794
4795 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
4796 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4797 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
4798 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4799 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
4800 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
4801 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4802 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4803 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4804
4805 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4806 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
4807 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4808 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4809 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4810 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4811 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4812 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4813
4814 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4815 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
4816 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4817
4818       </div>
4819       <div class="tags">
4820
4821
4822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4823
4824
4825       </div>
4826     </div>
4827     <div class="padding"></div>
4828
4829     <div class="entry">
4830       <div class="title">
4831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
4832       </div>
4833       <div class="date">
4834         30th July 2011
4835       </div>
4836       <div class="body">
4837         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4838 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
4839 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
4840 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
4841 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4842 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4843 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4844 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4845 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4846 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
4847 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4848 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4849 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
4850
4851 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
4852 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4853 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
4854 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
4855 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4856 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4857 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4858 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
4859 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
4860
4861 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4862 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4863 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4864 is presented.</p>
4865
4866 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
4867 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4868 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4869 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4870 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4871 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4872 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4873 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4874 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4875 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4876 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4877 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4878 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4879 find time to push this forward.</p>
4880
4881       </div>
4882       <div class="tags">
4883
4884
4885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4886
4887
4888       </div>
4889     </div>
4890     <div class="padding"></div>
4891
4892     <div class="entry">
4893       <div class="title">
4894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
4895       </div>
4896       <div class="date">
4897         29th July 2011
4898       </div>
4899       <div class="body">
4900         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4901 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4902 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
4903 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4904 issues.</p>
4905
4906 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4907 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4908 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4909
4910 <ol>
4911
4912 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4913 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4914 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4915 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4916 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
4917 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
4918 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4919 Debian.</li>
4920
4921 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4922 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4923 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4924 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4925 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4926 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4927 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
4928 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4929 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4930 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
4931 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4932 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4933 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4934
4935 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4936 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4937 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4938 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
4939 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
4940 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4941 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
4942 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
4943 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4944 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4945
4946 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4947 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4948 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4949 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
4950 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
4951 latter behaviour.</li>
4952
4953 </ol>
4954
4955 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4956 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4957 it do not matter much.</p>
4958
4959 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4960 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
4961 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4962
4963       </div>
4964       <div class="tags">
4965
4966
4967         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4968
4969
4970       </div>
4971     </div>
4972     <div class="padding"></div>
4973
4974     <div class="entry">
4975       <div class="title">
4976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
4977       </div>
4978       <div class="date">
4979         26th July 2011
4980       </div>
4981       <div class="body">
4982         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
4983 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4984 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4985 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4986 security support for a few years.</p>
4987
4988 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4989 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
4990 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4991 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4992 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
4993 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4994 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4995 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4996 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4997 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4998 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4999 easier in the future.</p>
5000
5001 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5002 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
5003 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
5004 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5005 do not have time for.</p>
5006
5007       </div>
5008       <div class="tags">
5009
5010
5011         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
5012
5013
5014       </div>
5015     </div>
5016     <div class="padding"></div>
5017
5018     <div class="entry">
5019       <div class="title">
5020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
5021       </div>
5022       <div class="date">
5023         20th June 2011
5024       </div>
5025       <div class="body">
5026         <p>Reading
5027 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
5028 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
5029 parts of the
5030 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
5031 and
5032 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
5033 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
5034 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
5035 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
5036
5037       </div>
5038       <div class="tags">
5039
5040
5041         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5042
5043
5044       </div>
5045     </div>
5046     <div class="padding"></div>
5047
5048     <div class="entry">
5049       <div class="title">
5050         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
5051       </div>
5052       <div class="date">
5053         30th April 2011
5054       </div>
5055       <div class="body">
5056         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
5057 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
5058 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
5059 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
5060 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
5061 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
5062 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
5063 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
5064 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
5065 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
5066
5067 <p>Where is it?  Visit
5068 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
5069 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
5070 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
5071 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
5072
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="tags">
5075
5076
5077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
5078
5079
5080       </div>
5081     </div>
5082     <div class="padding"></div>
5083
5084     <div class="entry">
5085       <div class="title">
5086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
5087       </div>
5088       <div class="date">
5089         29th April 2011
5090       </div>
5091       <div class="body">
5092         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
5093 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
5094 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
5095 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
5096 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
5097 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
5098 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
5099 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
5100 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
5101 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
5102 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
5103 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
5104 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
5105
5106 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
5107 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
5108 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
5109 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
5110 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
5111 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
5112 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
5113 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
5114 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
5115 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
5116 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
5117 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
5118 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
5119
5120 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
5121 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
5122 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
5123 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
5124 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
5125 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
5126 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
5127 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
5128 it.</p>
5129
5130 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
5131 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
5132 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
5133 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
5134 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
5135 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
5136 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
5137
5138 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
5139 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
5140 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
5141 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
5142 and range= options.</p>
5143
5144 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
5145 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
5146 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
5147 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
5148 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
5149 to best handle this.  I've noticed
5150 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
5151 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
5152 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
5153 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
5154
5155 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
5156 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
5157 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
5158 discussions instead of only
5159 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
5160 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
5161 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
5162 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
5163 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
5164 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
5165
5166       </div>
5167       <div class="tags">
5168
5169
5170         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
5171
5172
5173       </div>
5174     </div>
5175     <div class="padding"></div>
5176
5177     <div class="entry">
5178       <div class="title">
5179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
5180       </div>
5181       <div class="date">
5182          6th April 2011
5183       </div>
5184       <div class="body">
5185         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
5186 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
5187 A few days ago the project
5188 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
5189 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
5190 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
5191 into Gnash.</p>
5192
5193       </div>
5194       <div class="tags">
5195
5196
5197         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5198
5199
5200       </div>
5201     </div>
5202     <div class="padding"></div>
5203
5204     <div class="entry">
5205       <div class="title">
5206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
5207       </div>
5208       <div class="date">
5209          3rd April 2011
5210       </div>
5211       <div class="body">
5212         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
5213 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
5214 update in English.</p>
5215
5216 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
5217 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
5218 of the British service
5219 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
5220 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
5221 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
5222 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
5223 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
5224 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
5225 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
5226 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
5227 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
5228 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
5229 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
5230 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
5231 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
5232
5233 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
5234 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
5235 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
5236 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
5237 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
5238 public infrastructure.</p>
5239
5240 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
5241 such service?</p>
5242
5243       </div>
5244       <div class="tags">
5245
5246
5247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
5248
5249
5250       </div>
5251     </div>
5252     <div class="padding"></div>
5253
5254     <div class="entry">
5255       <div class="title">
5256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
5257       </div>
5258       <div class="date">
5259         28th January 2011
5260       </div>
5261       <div class="body">
5262         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
5263 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
5264 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
5265 available on the Internet, and check our locally
5266 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
5267 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
5268 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
5269 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
5270 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
5271 out which security holes were present in our free software
5272 collection.</p>
5273
5274 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
5275 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
5276 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
5277 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
5278 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
5279 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
5280 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
5281 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
5282 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
5283 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
5284 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
5285 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
5286 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
5287 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
5288 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
5289 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
5290
5291 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
5292 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
5293 check out, one could look up
5294 <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
5295 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
5296 The most recent one is
5297 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
5298 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
5299 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
5300
5301 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
5302 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
5303 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
5304 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
5305 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
5306 security issues out.</p>
5307
5308 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
5309 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
5310 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
5311 RHEL is providing
5312 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
5313 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
5314 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
5315
5316 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
5317 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
5318 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
5319 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
5320 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
5321 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
5322 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
5323 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
5324 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
5325 established soon.</p>
5326
5327 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
5328 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
5329 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
5330 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
5331 for their packages.</p>
5332
5333       </div>
5334       <div class="tags">
5335
5336
5337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5338
5339
5340       </div>
5341     </div>
5342     <div class="padding"></div>
5343
5344     <div class="entry">
5345       <div class="title">
5346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
5347       </div>
5348       <div class="date">
5349         23rd January 2011
5350       </div>
5351       <div class="body">
5352         <p>In the
5353 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
5354 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
5355 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
5356 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
5357 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
5358 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
5359 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
5360 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
5361 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
5362 one of my machines like this:</p>
5363
5364 <pre>
5365 loaded modules:
5366 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
5367 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
5368 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
5369 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
5370 10de:03ec pata_amd
5371 10de:03f6 sata_nv
5372 1022:1103 k8temp
5373 109e:036e bttv
5374 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
5375 11ab:4364 sky2
5376 </pre>
5377
5378 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
5379 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
5380
5381 <pre>
5382 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
5383     echo loaded pci modules:
5384     (
5385         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
5386         for address in * ; do
5387             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5388                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5389                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5390                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5391                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
5392                     echo "$id $module"
5393                 fi
5394             fi
5395         done
5396     )
5397     echo
5398 fi
5399 </pre>
5400
5401 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
5402 mappings:</p>
5403
5404 <pre>
5405 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
5406     echo loaded usb modules:
5407     (
5408         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
5409         for address in * ; do
5410             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5411                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5412                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5413                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5414                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
5415                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
5416                         echo "$id $module"
5417                     fi
5418                 fi
5419             fi
5420         done
5421     )
5422     echo
5423 fi
5424 </pre>
5425
5426 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
5427 well.</p>
5428
5429       </div>
5430       <div class="tags">
5431
5432
5433         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5434
5435
5436       </div>
5437     </div>
5438     <div class="padding"></div>
5439
5440     <div class="entry">
5441       <div class="title">
5442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
5443       </div>
5444       <div class="date">
5445         16th January 2011
5446       </div>
5447       <div class="body">
5448         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
5449 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
5450 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
5451 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
5452 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
5453 the Wikipedia article on
5454 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
5455 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
5456 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
5457 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
5458 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
5459 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
5460 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
5461 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
5462 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
5463 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
5464 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
5465 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
5466
5467 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
5468 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
5469 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
5470 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
5471 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
5472 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
5473 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
5474 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
5475 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
5476 from last week</a>.</p>
5477
5478 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
5479 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
5480 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
5481 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
5482 was without royalties and license terms, check out
5483 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
5484 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
5485
5486 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
5487 available from
5488 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
5489 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
5490 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
5491
5492 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
5493 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
5494 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
5495 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
5496
5497       </div>
5498       <div class="tags">
5499
5500
5501         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5502
5503
5504       </div>
5505     </div>
5506     <div class="padding"></div>
5507
5508     <div class="entry">
5509       <div class="title">
5510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
5511       </div>
5512       <div class="date">
5513         12th January 2011
5514       </div>
5515       <div class="body">
5516         <p>Today I discovered
5517 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
5518 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
5519 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
5520 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
5521 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
5522 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
5523 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
5524 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
5525 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
5526 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
5527 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
5528 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
5529 on the Google announcement is available from
5530 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
5531 A good read. :)</p>
5532
5533 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
5534 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
5535 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
5536 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
5537 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
5538 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
5539 browsers support H.264, and others support
5540 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
5541 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
5542 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
5543 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
5544 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
5545 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
5546 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
5547 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
5548
5549 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
5550 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
5551 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
5552 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
5553 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
5554 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
5555 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
5556
5557 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
5558 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
5559 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
5560 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
5561 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
5562 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
5563 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
5564
5565 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
5566 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
5567 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
5568 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
5569 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
5570 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
5571 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
5572
5573 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
5574 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
5575 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
5576 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
5577 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
5578 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
5579 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
5580 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
5581 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
5582 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
5583 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
5584 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
5585 I guess time will tell.</p>
5586
5587 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
5588 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
5589 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
5590
5591       </div>
5592       <div class="tags">
5593
5594
5595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5596
5597
5598       </div>
5599     </div>
5600     <div class="padding"></div>
5601
5602     <div class="entry">
5603       <div class="title">
5604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
5605       </div>
5606       <div class="date">
5607         30th December 2010
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="body">
5610         <p>After trying to
5611 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
5612 Ogg Theora</a> to
5613 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
5614 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
5615 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
5616 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
5617 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
5618 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
5619 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
5620
5621 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
5622 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
5623 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
5624 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
5625 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
5626 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
5627 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
5628
5629 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
5630 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
5631
5632       </div>
5633       <div class="tags">
5634
5635
5636         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5637
5638
5639       </div>
5640     </div>
5641     <div class="padding"></div>
5642
5643     <div class="entry">
5644       <div class="title">
5645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
5646       </div>
5647       <div class="date">
5648         27th December 2010
5649       </div>
5650       <div class="body">
5651         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
5652 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
5653 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
5654 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
5655 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
5656 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
5657 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
5658 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
5659
5660 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
5661 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
5662 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
5663 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
5664 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
5665 page</a>.</p>
5666
5667 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
5668 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
5669 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
5670 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
5671 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
5672 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
5673 specification on equal terms.</p>
5674
5675 <blockquote>
5676
5677 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
5678 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
5679 open standard:</p>
5680
5681 <ul>
5682
5683 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5684 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5685 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
5686 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
5687
5688 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5689 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
5690 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
5691 nominal fee.</li>
5692
5693 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
5694 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
5695 free basis.</li>
5696
5697 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5698
5699 </ul>
5700 </blockquote>
5701
5702 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
5703 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
5704 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
5705 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
5706 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
5707 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
5708 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
5709
5710 <blockquote>
5711
5712 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
5713
5714 <ol>
5715
5716 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
5717 tilgængelig.</li>
5718
5719 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
5720 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
5721
5722 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
5723 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
5724
5725 </ol>
5726
5727 </blockquote>
5728
5729 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
5730 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
5731
5732 <blockquote>
5733
5734 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
5735
5736 <ol>
5737
5738 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
5739 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
5740
5741 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
5742 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
5743 Standard themselves;</li>
5744
5745 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
5746 any party or in any business model;</li>
5747
5748 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
5749 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
5750 parties;</li>
5751
5752 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
5753 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
5754 parties.</li>
5755
5756 </ol>
5757
5758 </blockquote>
5759
5760 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
5761 its
5762 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
5763 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
5764
5765 <blockquote>
5766 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
5767
5768 <ul>
5769
5770 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
5771   democratic:
5772
5773          <ul>
5774
5775          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
5776             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
5777             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
5778             and managed.</li>
5779
5780          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
5781             method, can be changed through input from all
5782             participants.</li>
5783
5784          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
5785             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
5786
5787          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
5788             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
5789
5790          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
5791             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
5792             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
5793
5794          </ul>
5795
5796 </li>
5797
5798 </ul>
5799
5800 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
5801 <ul>
5802
5803 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
5804   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
5805   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
5806   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
5807   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
5808
5809 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
5810   a technical or economic barriers</li>
5811
5812 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
5813   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
5814   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
5815   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
5816   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
5817   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
5818   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
5819   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
5820   intended to function.</li>
5821
5822 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
5823   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
5824   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
5825
5826 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
5827   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
5828   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
5829   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
5830   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
5831   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
5832   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
5833   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
5834
5835       <ul>
5836
5837       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
5838         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
5839         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
5840
5841       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
5842         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
5843         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
5844         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
5845
5846       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
5847         licensor</li>
5848
5849       </ul>
5850 </li>
5851
5852 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
5853   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
5854   or restricted licensing terms</li>
5855
5856 </ul>
5857
5858 </blockquote>
5859
5860 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
5861 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
5862 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
5863 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
5864 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
5865 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
5866 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
5867 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
5868 Standards.</p>
5869
5870       </div>
5871       <div class="tags">
5872
5873
5874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5875
5876
5877       </div>
5878     </div>
5879     <div class="padding"></div>
5880
5881     <div class="entry">
5882       <div class="title">
5883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
5884       </div>
5885       <div class="date">
5886         25th December 2010
5887       </div>
5888       <div class="body">
5889         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
5890 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
5891
5892 <blockquote>
5893
5894 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
5895 as follows:</p>
5896
5897 <ol>
5898
5899 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
5900 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
5901 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
5902
5903 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5904 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5905 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
5906 parties.</li>
5907
5908 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5909 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
5910 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
5911
5912 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
5913 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
5914
5915 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5916
5917 </ol>
5918
5919 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
5920 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
5921 products based on the standard.</p>
5922 </blockquote>
5923
5924 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
5925 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
5926 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
5927 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
5928 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
5929 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
5930 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
5931 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
5932
5933 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
5934
5935 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
5936 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
5937 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
5938 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
5939 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
5940 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
5941 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
5942 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
5943 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
5944 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
5945 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
5946 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
5947 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
5948 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
5949
5950 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
5951
5952 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
5953 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
5954 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
5955 documentation indicating this.</p>
5956
5957 <p>According to
5958 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
5959 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
5960 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
5961 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
5962 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
5963 report is correct.</p>
5964
5965 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
5966
5967 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
5968 container format</a> and both the
5969 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
5970 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
5971 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
5972
5973 <blockquote>
5974
5975 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
5976 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
5977 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
5978 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
5979 specification compliance.
5980
5981 </blockquote>
5982
5983 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
5984 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
5985 this is the term:<p>
5986
5987 <blockquote>
5988
5989 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
5990 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
5991 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
5992 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
5993 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
5994 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
5995 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
5996 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
5997 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
5998 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
5999 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
6000 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
6001
6002 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
6003 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
6004 </blockquote>
6005
6006 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
6007 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
6008 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
6009 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
6010 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
6011
6012 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
6013
6014 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
6015 Theora format.
6016 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
6017 and
6018 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
6019 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
6020 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
6021 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
6022 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
6023 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
6024 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
6025 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
6026
6027 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
6028
6029 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
6030
6031 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
6032
6033 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
6034 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
6035 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
6036 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
6037 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
6038 this.</p>
6039
6040 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
6041 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
6042
6043       </div>
6044       <div class="tags">
6045
6046
6047         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6048
6049
6050       </div>
6051     </div>
6052     <div class="padding"></div>
6053
6054     <div class="entry">
6055       <div class="title">
6056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
6057       </div>
6058       <div class="date">
6059         25th December 2010
6060       </div>
6061       <div class="body">
6062         <p>A few days ago
6063 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
6064 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
6065 2.0 of
6066 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
6067 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
6068 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
6069 Nothing very surprising there, given
6070 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
6071 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
6072 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
6073 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
6074 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
6075 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
6076 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
6077 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
6078 standard definition from its content.</p>
6079
6080 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
6081 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
6082 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
6083 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
6084 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
6085 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
6086 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
6087 background information about that story is available in
6088 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
6089 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
6090
6091 <blockquote>
6092 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
6093 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
6094 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
6095
6096 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
6097
6098 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
6099
6100 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
6101
6102 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
6103
6104 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
6105
6106 <p>
6107 <ul>
6108 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
6109 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
6110 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
6111 </ul>
6112 </p>
6113
6114 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
6115
6116 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
6117
6118 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
6119
6120 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
6121
6122 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
6123
6124
6125 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
6126 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
6127 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
6128 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
6129 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
6130 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
6131
6132 </p>
6133
6134 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
6135
6136 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
6137
6138 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
6139
6140 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
6141
6142 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
6143
6144 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
6145
6146 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
6147
6148 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
6149
6150 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
6151
6152 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
6153
6154 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
6155
6156 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
6157
6158 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
6159
6160 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
6161
6162 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
6163
6164 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
6165
6166 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
6167
6168 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
6169
6170 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
6171
6172 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
6173
6174 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
6175
6176 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
6177
6178 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
6179
6180 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
6181
6182 <p>On security:</p>
6183
6184 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
6185
6186 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
6187
6188 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
6189
6190 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
6191
6192 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
6193
6194 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
6195
6196 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
6197
6198 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
6199
6200 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
6201
6202 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
6203
6204 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
6205
6206 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
6207
6208 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
6209
6210 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
6211
6212 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
6213
6214 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
6215
6216 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
6217
6218 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
6219
6220 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
6221
6222 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
6223
6224 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
6225
6226 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
6227
6228 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
6229
6230 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
6231
6232 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
6233
6234 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
6235
6236 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
6237
6238 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
6239
6240 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
6241
6242 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
6243
6244 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
6245
6246 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
6247
6248 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
6249
6250 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
6251
6252 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
6253
6254 <p>Cordially,<br>
6255 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
6256 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
6257 </blockquote>
6258
6259       </div>
6260       <div class="tags">
6261
6262
6263         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6264
6265
6266       </div>
6267     </div>
6268     <div class="padding"></div>
6269
6270     <div class="entry">
6271       <div class="title">
6272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
6273       </div>
6274       <div class="date">
6275         25th December 2010
6276       </div>
6277       <div class="body">
6278         <p>Half a year ago I
6279 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
6280 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
6281 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
6282 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
6283
6284 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
6285 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
6286 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
6287 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
6288 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
6289 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
6290 got such a great test tool available.</p>
6291
6292       </div>
6293       <div class="tags">
6294
6295
6296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6297
6298
6299       </div>
6300     </div>
6301     <div class="padding"></div>
6302
6303     <div class="entry">
6304       <div class="title">
6305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
6306       </div>
6307       <div class="date">
6308         22nd December 2010
6309       </div>
6310       <div class="body">
6311         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6312 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6313 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6314 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6315 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6316 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6317 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6318 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6319 university.</p>
6320
6321 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6322 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6323 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6324 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6325 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6326 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6327 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6328 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6329
6330 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6331 I perform on a new model.</p>
6332
6333 <ul>
6334
6335 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6336 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6337 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6338
6339 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6340 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6341
6342 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6343 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6344 reported by the program.</li>
6345
6346 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6347 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6348 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6349 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6350 normally test this by playing
6351 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6352 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6353
6354 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6355 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6356
6357 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6358 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6359
6360 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6361 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6362
6363 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6364 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6365 few.</li>
6366
6367 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6368 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6369 notice this.</li>
6370
6371 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6372 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6373 resume.</li>
6374
6375 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6376 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6377 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6378 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6379 not.</li>
6380
6381 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6382 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6383 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6384 existence.</li>
6385
6386 </ul>
6387
6388 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6389 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6390 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6391 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6392 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6393 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6394 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6395 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6396
6397       </div>
6398       <div class="tags">
6399
6400
6401         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6402
6403
6404       </div>
6405     </div>
6406     <div class="padding"></div>
6407
6408     <div class="entry">
6409       <div class="title">
6410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6411       </div>
6412       <div class="date">
6413         11th December 2010
6414       </div>
6415       <div class="body">
6416         <p>As I continue to explore
6417 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6418 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6419 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6420
6421 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6422 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6423 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6424 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6425 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6426 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6427 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6428 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6429 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6430 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6431 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6432 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6433 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6434 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6435 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6436 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6437 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6438 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6439 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6440 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6441
6442 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6443 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6444 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6445 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6446 If the Skolelinux foundation
6447 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6448 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6449 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6450 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
6451 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6452 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6453 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6454 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6455
6456 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6457 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6458 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6459 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6460 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6461 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6462 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6463 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6464 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6465 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6466 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6467 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6468 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6469 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6470 currencies.</p>
6471
6472 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6473 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6474 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6475 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6476 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6477 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6478 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6479 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6480 BitCoins.  Check out
6481 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6482 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6483 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6484 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6485 yet.</p>
6486
6487 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6488 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6489 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6490 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6491 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6492
6493       </div>
6494       <div class="tags">
6495
6496
6497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6498
6499
6500       </div>
6501     </div>
6502     <div class="padding"></div>
6503
6504     <div class="entry">
6505       <div class="title">
6506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
6507       </div>
6508       <div class="date">
6509         10th December 2010
6510       </div>
6511       <div class="body">
6512         <p>With this weeks lawless
6513 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6514 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6515 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6516 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6517 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6518 A blog post from
6519 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6520 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6521 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6522 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6523 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6524 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6525 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6526
6527 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6528 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6529 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6530 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6531 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6532 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6533 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6534 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6535 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6536 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6537
6538 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6539 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6540 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6541 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6542 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6543 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6544 you can even get
6545 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6546 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6547 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6548 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6549
6550 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6551 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6552 donations to the address
6553 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6554
6555       </div>
6556       <div class="tags">
6557
6558
6559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6560
6561
6562       </div>
6563     </div>
6564     <div class="padding"></div>
6565
6566     <div class="entry">
6567       <div class="title">
6568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
6569       </div>
6570       <div class="date">
6571          9th December 2010
6572       </div>
6573       <div class="body">
6574         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
6575 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
6576 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
6577 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
6578 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
6579 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
6580 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
6581 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
6582 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
6583 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
6584 operational.</p>
6585
6586 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
6587 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
6588 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
6589 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
6590 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
6591 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
6592 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
6593
6594       </div>
6595       <div class="tags">
6596
6597
6598         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
6599
6600
6601       </div>
6602     </div>
6603     <div class="padding"></div>
6604
6605     <div class="entry">
6606       <div class="title">
6607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
6608       </div>
6609       <div class="date">
6610         29th November 2010
6611       </div>
6612       <div class="body">
6613         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6614 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
6615 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
6616 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
6617 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
6618 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
6619
6620 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
6621 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
6622 will hold its
6623 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
6624 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
6625 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
6626 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
6627 vote this year.</p>
6628
6629       </div>
6630       <div class="tags">
6631
6632
6633         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6634
6635
6636       </div>
6637     </div>
6638     <div class="padding"></div>
6639
6640     <div class="entry">
6641       <div class="title">
6642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6643       </div>
6644       <div class="date">
6645         27th November 2010
6646       </div>
6647       <div class="body">
6648         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6649 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6650 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6651 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6652 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6653 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6654 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6655 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6656
6657 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6658 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6659 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6660 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6661 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6662 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6663 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6664 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6665 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6666 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6667 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6668
6669 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6670 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6671 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6672 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6673 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6674 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6675 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6676 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6677 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6678 what is going on.</p>
6679
6680       </div>
6681       <div class="tags">
6682
6683
6684         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6685
6686
6687       </div>
6688     </div>
6689     <div class="padding"></div>
6690
6691     <div class="entry">
6692       <div class="title">
6693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
6694       </div>
6695       <div class="date">
6696         22nd November 2010
6697       </div>
6698       <div class="body">
6699         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6700 upgrade testing of the
6701 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6702 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6703 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6704 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6705
6706 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6707
6708 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6709
6710 <blockquote><p>
6711   apache2.2-bin
6712   aptdaemon
6713   baobab
6714   binfmt-support
6715   browser-plugin-gnash
6716   cheese-common
6717   cli-common
6718   cups-pk-helper
6719   dmz-cursor-theme
6720   empathy
6721   empathy-common
6722   freedesktop-sound-theme
6723   freeglut3
6724   gconf-defaults-service
6725   gdm-themes
6726   gedit-plugins
6727   geoclue
6728   geoclue-hostip
6729   geoclue-localnet
6730   geoclue-manual
6731   geoclue-yahoo
6732   gnash
6733   gnash-common
6734   gnome
6735   gnome-backgrounds
6736   gnome-cards-data
6737   gnome-codec-install
6738   gnome-core
6739   gnome-desktop-environment
6740   gnome-disk-utility
6741   gnome-screenshot
6742   gnome-search-tool
6743   gnome-session-canberra
6744   gnome-system-log
6745   gnome-themes-extras
6746   gnome-themes-more
6747   gnome-user-share
6748   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6749   gstreamer0.10-tools
6750   gtk2-engines
6751   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6752   gtk2-engines-smooth
6753   hamster-applet
6754   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6755   libapr1
6756   libaprutil1
6757   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6758   libaprutil1-ldap
6759   libart2.0-cil
6760   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6761   libboost-python1.42.0
6762   libboost-thread1.42.0
6763   libchamplain-0.4-0
6764   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6765   libcheese-gtk18
6766   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6767   libcryptui0
6768   libdiscid0
6769   libelf1
6770   libepc-1.0-2
6771   libepc-common
6772   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6773   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6774   libfreerdp0
6775   libgconf2.0-cil
6776   libgdata-common
6777   libgdata7
6778   libgdu-gtk0
6779   libgee2
6780   libgeoclue0
6781   libgexiv2-0
6782   libgif4
6783   libglade2.0-cil
6784   libglib2.0-cil
6785   libgmime2.4-cil
6786   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6787   libgnome2.24-cil
6788   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6789   libgpod-common
6790   libgpod4
6791   libgtk2.0-cil
6792   libgtkglext1
6793   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6794   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6795   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6796   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6797   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6798   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6799   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6800   libmono-security2.0-cil
6801   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6802   libmono-system2.0-cil
6803   libmtp8
6804   libmusicbrainz3-6
6805   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6806   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6807   libopal3.6.8
6808   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6809   libpt2.6.7
6810   libpython2.6
6811   librpm1
6812   librpmio1
6813   libsdl1.2debian
6814   libsrtp0
6815   libssh-4
6816   libtelepathy-farsight0
6817   libtelepathy-glib0
6818   libtidy-0.99-0
6819   media-player-info
6820   mesa-utils
6821   mono-2.0-gac
6822   mono-gac
6823   mono-runtime
6824   nautilus-sendto
6825   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6826   p7zip-full
6827   pkg-config
6828   python-aptdaemon
6829   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6830   python-axiom
6831   python-beautifulsoup
6832   python-bugbuddy
6833   python-clientform
6834   python-coherence
6835   python-configobj
6836   python-crypto
6837   python-cupshelpers
6838   python-elementtree
6839   python-epsilon
6840   python-evolution
6841   python-feedparser
6842   python-gdata
6843   python-gdbm
6844   python-gst0.10
6845   python-gtkglext1
6846   python-gtksourceview2
6847   python-httplib2
6848   python-louie
6849   python-mako
6850   python-markupsafe
6851   python-mechanize
6852   python-nevow
6853   python-notify
6854   python-opengl
6855   python-openssl
6856   python-pam
6857   python-pkg-resources
6858   python-pyasn1
6859   python-pysqlite2
6860   python-rdflib
6861   python-serial
6862   python-tagpy
6863   python-twisted-bin
6864   python-twisted-conch
6865   python-twisted-core
6866   python-twisted-web
6867   python-utidylib
6868   python-webkit
6869   python-xdg
6870   python-zope.interface
6871   remmina
6872   remmina-plugin-data
6873   remmina-plugin-rdp
6874   remmina-plugin-vnc
6875   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6876   rhythmbox-plugins
6877   rpm-common
6878   rpm2cpio
6879   seahorse-plugins
6880   shotwell
6881   software-center
6882   system-config-printer-udev
6883   telepathy-gabble
6884   telepathy-mission-control-5
6885   telepathy-salut
6886   tomboy
6887   totem
6888   totem-coherence
6889   totem-mozilla
6890   totem-plugins
6891   transmission-common
6892   xdg-user-dirs
6893   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6894   xserver-xephyr
6895 </p></blockquote>
6896
6897 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6898
6899 <blockquote><p>
6900   cheese
6901   ekiga
6902   eog
6903   epiphany-extensions
6904   evolution-exchange
6905   fast-user-switch-applet
6906   file-roller
6907   gcalctool
6908   gconf-editor
6909   gdm
6910   gedit
6911   gedit-common
6912   gnome-games
6913   gnome-games-data
6914   gnome-nettool
6915   gnome-system-tools
6916   gnome-themes
6917   gnuchess
6918   gucharmap
6919   guile-1.8-libs
6920   libavahi-ui0
6921   libdmx1
6922   libgalago3
6923   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6924   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6925   liblircclient0
6926   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6927   libspeexdsp1
6928   libsvga1
6929   rhythmbox
6930   seahorse
6931   sound-juicer
6932   system-config-printer
6933   totem-common
6934   transmission-gtk
6935   vinagre
6936   vino
6937 </p></blockquote>
6938
6939 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6940
6941 <blockquote><p>
6942   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6943 </p></blockquote>
6944
6945 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6946
6947 <blockquote><p>
6948 [nothing]
6949 </p></blockquote>
6950
6951 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6952
6953 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6954
6955 <blockquote><p>
6956   ksmserver
6957 </p></blockquote>
6958
6959 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6960
6961 <blockquote><p>
6962   kwin
6963   network-manager-kde
6964 </p></blockquote>
6965
6966 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6967
6968 <blockquote><p>
6969   arts
6970   dolphin
6971   freespacenotifier
6972   google-gadgets-gst
6973   google-gadgets-xul
6974   kappfinder
6975   kcalc
6976   kcharselect
6977   kde-core
6978   kde-plasma-desktop
6979   kde-standard
6980   kde-window-manager
6981   kdeartwork
6982   kdeartwork-emoticons
6983   kdeartwork-style
6984   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6985   kdebase
6986   kdebase-apps
6987   kdebase-workspace
6988   kdebase-workspace-bin
6989   kdebase-workspace-data
6990   kdeeject
6991   kdelibs
6992   kdeplasma-addons
6993   kdeutils
6994   kdewallpapers
6995   kdf
6996   kfloppy
6997   kgpg
6998   khelpcenter4
6999   kinfocenter
7000   konq-plugins-l10n
7001   konqueror-nsplugins
7002   kscreensaver
7003   kscreensaver-xsavers
7004   ktimer
7005   kwrite
7006   libgle3
7007   libkde4-ruby1.8
7008   libkonq5
7009   libkonq5-templates
7010   libnetpbm10
7011   libplasma-ruby
7012   libplasma-ruby1.8
7013   libqt4-ruby1.8
7014   marble-data
7015   marble-plugins
7016   netpbm
7017   nuvola-icon-theme
7018   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7019   plasma-desktop
7020   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7021   plasma-runners-addons
7022   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7023   plasma-scriptengine-python
7024   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7025   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7026   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7027   plasma-scriptengines
7028   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7029   plasma-widget-folderview
7030   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7031   ruby
7032   sweeper
7033   update-notifier-kde
7034   xscreensaver-data-extra
7035   xscreensaver-gl
7036   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7037   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7038 </p></blockquote>
7039
7040 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7041
7042 <blockquote><p>
7043   ark
7044   google-gadgets-common
7045   google-gadgets-qt
7046   htdig
7047   kate
7048   kdebase-bin
7049   kdebase-data
7050   kdepasswd
7051   kfind
7052   klipper
7053   konq-plugins
7054   konqueror
7055   ksysguard
7056   ksysguardd
7057   libarchive1
7058   libcln6
7059   libeet1
7060   libeina-svn-06
7061   libggadget-1.0-0b
7062   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7063   libgps19
7064   libkdecorations4
7065   libkephal4
7066   libkonq4
7067   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7068   libkscreensaver5
7069   libksgrd4
7070   libksignalplotter4
7071   libkunitconversion4
7072   libkwineffects1a
7073   libmarblewidget4
7074   libntrack-qt4-1
7075   libntrack0
7076   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7077   libplasmaclock4a
7078   libplasmagenericshell4
7079   libprocesscore4a
7080   libprocessui4a
7081   libqalculate5
7082   libqedje0a
7083   libqtruby4shared2
7084   libqzion0a
7085   libruby1.8
7086   libscim8c2a
7087   libsmokekdecore4-3
7088   libsmokekdeui4-3
7089   libsmokekfile3
7090   libsmokekhtml3
7091   libsmokekio3
7092   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7093   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7094   libsmokekparts3
7095   libsmokektexteditor3
7096   libsmokekutils3
7097   libsmokenepomuk3
7098   libsmokephonon3
7099   libsmokeplasma3
7100   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7101   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7102   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7103   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7104   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7105   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7106   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7107   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7108   libsmokeqttest4-3
7109   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7110   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7111   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7112   libsmokesolid3
7113   libsmokesoprano3
7114   libtaskmanager4a
7115   libtidy-0.99-0
7116   libweather-ion4a
7117   libxklavier16
7118   libxxf86misc1
7119   okteta
7120   oxygencursors
7121   plasma-dataengines-addons
7122   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7123   plasma-widget-lancelot
7124   plasma-widgets-addons
7125   plasma-widgets-workspace
7126   polkit-kde-1
7127   ruby1.8
7128   systemsettings
7129   update-notifier-common
7130 </p></blockquote>
7131
7132 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7133 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7134 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7135 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7136
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="tags">
7139
7140
7141         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7142
7143
7144       </div>
7145     </div>
7146     <div class="padding"></div>
7147
7148     <div class="entry">
7149       <div class="title">
7150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
7151       </div>
7152       <div class="date">
7153         22nd November 2010
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="body">
7156         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7157 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7158 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7159 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7160 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7161 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7162 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7163 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7164 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7165
7166 <p>I found
7167 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7168 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7169 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7170 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7171 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7172 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7173
7174 <pre>
7175 #!/bin/sh
7176
7177 # Based on
7178 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7179
7180 set -e
7181 set -x
7182
7183 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7184     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7185     exit 1
7186 else
7187     host="$1"
7188 fi
7189
7190 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7191     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7192     exit 1
7193 fi
7194
7195 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7196 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7197 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7198 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7199
7200 img=$host.img
7201 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7202 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7203
7204 parted $img mklabel msdos
7205 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7206 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7207 parted $img set 1 boot on
7208
7209 modprobe dm-mod
7210 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7211 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7212
7213 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7214 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7215 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7216
7217 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7218 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7219 </pre>
7220
7221 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7222 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7223
7224 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7225 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7226 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7227 seem to work just fine.</p>
7228
7229       </div>
7230       <div class="tags">
7231
7232
7233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7234
7235
7236       </div>
7237     </div>
7238     <div class="padding"></div>
7239
7240     <div class="entry">
7241       <div class="title">
7242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
7243       </div>
7244       <div class="date">
7245         20th November 2010
7246       </div>
7247       <div class="body">
7248         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7249 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7250 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7251 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7252
7253 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7254 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7255 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7256
7257 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7258
7259 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7260
7261 <blockquote><p>
7262   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7263   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7264   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7265   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7266   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7267   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7268   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7269   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7270   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7271   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7272   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7273   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7274   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7275   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7276   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7277   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7278   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7279   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7280   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7281   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7282   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7283   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7284   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7285   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7286   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7287   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7288   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7289   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7290   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7291   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7292   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7293   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7294   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7295   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7296   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7297   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7298   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7299   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7300   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7301   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7302   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7303   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7304   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7305   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7306   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7307   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7308   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7309   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7310   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7311   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7312   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7313   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7314   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7315   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7316   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7317   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7318   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7319   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7320   zip
7321 </p></blockquote>
7322
7323 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7324
7325 <blockquote><p>
7326   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7327   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7328   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7329   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7330   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7331   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7332   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7333   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7334   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7335   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7336   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7337   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7338   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7339   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7340   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7341   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7342   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7343   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7344   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7345   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7346   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7347   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7348   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7349   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7350   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7351   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7352   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7353   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7354   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7355 </p></blockquote>
7356
7357 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7358
7359 <blockquote><p>
7360   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7361 </p></blockquote>
7362
7363 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7364
7365 <blockquote><p>
7366 [nothing]
7367 </p></blockquote>
7368
7369 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7370
7371 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7372
7373 <blockquote><p>
7374   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7375   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7376   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7377   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7378   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7379   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7380   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7381   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7382   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7383   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7384   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7385   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7386   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7387   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7388   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7389   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7390   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7391   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7392   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7393   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7394   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7395   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7396   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7397   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7398   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7399   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7400   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7401   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7402   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7403   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7404 </p></blockquote>
7405
7406 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7407
7408 <blockquote><p>
7409   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7410   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7411   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7412   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7413   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7414   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7415   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7416   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7417   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7418   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7419   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7420   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7421   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7422   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7423   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7424   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7425   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7426   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7427   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7428   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7429   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7430   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7431   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7432   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7433   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7434   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7435   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7436   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7437   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7438   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7439   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7440   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7441   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7442 </p></blockquote>
7443
7444 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7445
7446 <blockquote><p>
7447   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7448   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7449   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7450   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7451   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7452   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7453   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7454 </p></blockquote>
7455
7456 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7457
7458 <blockquote><p>
7459   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7460 </p></blockquote>
7461
7462       </div>
7463       <div class="tags">
7464
7465
7466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7467
7468
7469       </div>
7470     </div>
7471     <div class="padding"></div>
7472
7473     <div class="entry">
7474       <div class="title">
7475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7476       </div>
7477       <div class="date">
7478         20th November 2010
7479       </div>
7480       <div class="body">
7481         <p>Answering
7482 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7483 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7484 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7485 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7486 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7487 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7488 releases out more often.</p>
7489
7490 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7491 I have considered setting up a <a
7492 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7493 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7494 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7495 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7496 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7497 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7498 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7499 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7500 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7501 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7502 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7503 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7504
7505       </div>
7506       <div class="tags">
7507
7508
7509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7510
7511
7512       </div>
7513     </div>
7514     <div class="padding"></div>
7515
7516     <div class="entry">
7517       <div class="title">
7518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7519       </div>
7520       <div class="date">
7521          9th November 2010
7522       </div>
7523       <div class="body">
7524         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7525
7526 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7527 3D linked in from
7528 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7529 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7530
7531       </div>
7532       <div class="tags">
7533
7534
7535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7536
7537
7538       </div>
7539     </div>
7540     <div class="padding"></div>
7541
7542     <div class="entry">
7543       <div class="title">
7544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
7545       </div>
7546       <div class="date">
7547          7th November 2010
7548       </div>
7549       <div class="body">
7550         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
7551 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
7552 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
7553 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
7554 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
7555 working using this DVD.</p>
7556
7557 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
7558 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
7559 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
7560 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
7561 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
7562 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
7563 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
7564
7565 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
7566 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
7567 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
7568 Debian archive.</p>
7569
7570 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
7571 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
7572 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
7573 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
7574 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
7575 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
7576 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
7577 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
7578 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
7579 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
7580 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
7581 free X driver should work.</p>
7582
7583 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
7584 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
7585 DVD more useful again.</p>
7586
7587       </div>
7588       <div class="tags">
7589
7590
7591         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7592
7593
7594       </div>
7595     </div>
7596     <div class="padding"></div>
7597
7598     <div class="entry">
7599       <div class="title">
7600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7601       </div>
7602       <div class="date">
7603         24th October 2010
7604       </div>
7605       <div class="body">
7606         <p>Some updates.</p>
7607
7608 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7609 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7610 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7611 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7612 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7613 :)</p>
7614
7615 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7616 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7617 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7618 It is called
7619 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7620 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7621 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7622 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7623 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7624 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7625
7626 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7627 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7628 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7629 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7630 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7631 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7632 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7633 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7634 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7635 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7636
7637       </div>
7638       <div class="tags">
7639
7640
7641         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
7642
7643
7644       </div>
7645     </div>
7646     <div class="padding"></div>
7647
7648     <div class="entry">
7649       <div class="title">
7650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
7651       </div>
7652       <div class="date">
7653         19th October 2010
7654       </div>
7655       <div class="body">
7656         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
7657 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
7658 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
7659 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
7660 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
7661 AVM2 flash files.</p>
7662
7663 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
7664 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
7665 following text:</P>
7666
7667 <p><blockquote>
7668
7669   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
7670   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
7671
7672   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
7673
7674   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
7675
7676   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
7677   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
7678   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
7679   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
7680   days. The project web page is available from
7681   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
7682   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
7683   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
7684
7685   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
7686   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
7687   to get this to happen.</p>
7688
7689   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
7690   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
7691
7692 </blockquote></p>
7693
7694 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
7695 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
7696 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
7697 :)</p>
7698
7699       </div>
7700       <div class="tags">
7701
7702
7703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7704
7705
7706       </div>
7707     </div>
7708     <div class="padding"></div>
7709
7710     <div class="entry">
7711       <div class="title">
7712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
7713       </div>
7714       <div class="date">
7715          9th October 2010
7716       </div>
7717       <div class="body">
7718         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
7719 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
7720 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
7721 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
7722 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
7723 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
7724 robots.</p>
7725
7726 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
7727 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
7728 a few less important features too.</p>
7729
7730 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
7731 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
7732 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
7733 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
7734
7735 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
7736 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
7737 source or binary package:</p>
7738
7739 <p><ul>
7740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
7741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
7742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
7743 </ul></p>
7744
7745 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
7746 please let me know.</p>
7747
7748       </div>
7749       <div class="tags">
7750
7751
7752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7753
7754
7755       </div>
7756     </div>
7757     <div class="padding"></div>
7758
7759     <div class="entry">
7760       <div class="title">
7761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
7762       </div>
7763       <div class="date">
7764          3rd October 2010
7765       </div>
7766       <div class="body">
7767         <p><ul>
7768
7769 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
7770 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
7771
7772 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
7773 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
7774 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
7775
7776 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
7777 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
7778 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
7779 simple setup.
7780
7781 </ul></p>
7782
7783       </div>
7784       <div class="tags">
7785
7786
7787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7788
7789
7790       </div>
7791     </div>
7792     <div class="padding"></div>
7793
7794     <div class="entry">
7795       <div class="title">
7796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
7797       </div>
7798       <div class="date">
7799          9th September 2010
7800       </div>
7801       <div class="body">
7802         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
7803 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
7804 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
7805 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
7806 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
7807 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
7808 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
7809 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
7810 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
7811
7812 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
7813 written:</p>
7814
7815 <blockquote>
7816 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
7817 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
7818 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
7819 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
7820 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
7821
7822 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
7823 standard.</p>
7824 </blockquote>
7825
7826 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
7827 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
7828 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
7829 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
7830
7831 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
7832 read
7833 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
7834 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
7835 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
7836 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
7837 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
7838 the issue.  The solution is to support the
7839 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
7840 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
7841 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
7842
7843       </div>
7844       <div class="tags">
7845
7846
7847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7848
7849
7850       </div>
7851     </div>
7852     <div class="padding"></div>
7853
7854     <div class="entry">
7855       <div class="title">
7856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
7857       </div>
7858       <div class="date">
7859          4th September 2010
7860       </div>
7861       <div class="body">
7862         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7863 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7864 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7865 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7866 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7867 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7868 installed.</p>
7869
7870 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7871 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7872 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7873 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7874 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7875 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7876 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7877 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7878 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7879
7880 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7881 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7882 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7883 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7884 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7885 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7886 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7887 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7888 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7889 pages they want to visit.</p>
7890
7891 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7892 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7893 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7894 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7895 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7896 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7897 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7898 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7899 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7900 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7901 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7902
7903       </div>
7904       <div class="tags">
7905
7906
7907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7908
7909
7910       </div>
7911     </div>
7912     <div class="padding"></div>
7913
7914     <div class="entry">
7915       <div class="title">
7916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
7917       </div>
7918       <div class="date">
7919          1st September 2010
7920       </div>
7921       <div class="body">
7922         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
7923 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
7924 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
7925 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
7926 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
7927 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
7928 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
7929 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
7930 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
7931 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
7932 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
7933 drive around.</p>
7934
7935 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
7936 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
7937
7938 <p><pre>
7939 use Spykee;
7940 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
7941 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
7942 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
7943 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
7944 $spykee->left();
7945 sleep 2;
7946 $spykee->right();
7947 sleep 2;
7948 $spykee->forward();
7949 sleep 2;
7950 $spykee->back();
7951 sleep 2;
7952 $spykee->stop();
7953 </pre></p>
7954
7955 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
7956 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
7957 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
7958 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
7959 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
7960 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
7961 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
7962 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
7963 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
7964 going. :).</p>
7965
7966 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
7967 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
7968 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
7969 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
7970
7971       </div>
7972       <div class="tags">
7973
7974
7975         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7976
7977
7978       </div>
7979     </div>
7980     <div class="padding"></div>
7981
7982     <div class="entry">
7983       <div class="title">
7984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
7985       </div>
7986       <div class="date">
7987         30th August 2010
7988       </div>
7989       <div class="body">
7990         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
7991 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
7992 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
7993 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
7994 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
7995 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
7996 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
7997
7998 <pre>
7999 % ln foo bar
8000 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
8001 %
8002 </pre>
8003
8004 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
8005 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
8006 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
8007 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
8008 nevertheless. :)</p>
8009
8010 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
8011 git from
8012 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
8013
8014       </div>
8015       <div class="tags">
8016
8017
8018         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8019
8020
8021       </div>
8022     </div>
8023     <div class="padding"></div>
8024
8025     <div class="entry">
8026       <div class="title">
8027         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
8028       </div>
8029       <div class="date">
8030         26th August 2010
8031       </div>
8032       <div class="body">
8033         <p>My file system sematics program
8034 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
8035 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
8036 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
8037 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
8038 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
8039 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
8040 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
8041 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
8042 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
8043 script:</p>
8044
8045 <pre>
8046 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
8047   mode_t retval = 0;
8048   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
8049   if (-1 != fd) {
8050     unlink(name);
8051     struct stat statbuf;
8052     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
8053       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
8054     }
8055     close(fd);
8056   }
8057   return retval;
8058 }
8059
8060 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
8061 int test_umask(void) {
8062   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
8063
8064   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
8065   mode_t newmode;
8066   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
8067     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
8068            newmode);
8069   }
8070   umask(007);
8071   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
8072     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
8073            newmode);
8074   }
8075
8076   umask (orig_umask);
8077   return 0;
8078 }
8079
8080 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
8081   [...]
8082   test_umask();
8083   return 0;
8084 }
8085 </pre>
8086
8087 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
8088
8089 <pre>
8090 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
8091 info: testing symlink creation
8092 info: testing subdirectory creation
8093 info: testing fcntl locking
8094   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8095   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8096   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
8097   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8098   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8099   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
8100 info: testing umask effect on file creation
8101 </pre>
8102
8103 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
8104 result:</p>
8105
8106 <pre>
8107 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
8108 info: testing symlink creation
8109 info: testing subdirectory creation
8110 info: testing fcntl locking
8111   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8112   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8113   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
8114   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8115   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8116   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
8117 info: testing umask effect on file creation
8118   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
8119   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
8120 </pre>
8121
8122 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
8123 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
8124 directory.</p>
8125
8126 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
8127 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
8128
8129 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
8130 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
8131 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
8132
8133       </div>
8134       <div class="tags">
8135
8136
8137         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8138
8139
8140       </div>
8141     </div>
8142     <div class="padding"></div>
8143
8144     <div class="entry">
8145       <div class="title">
8146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
8147       </div>
8148       <div class="date">
8149         15th August 2010
8150       </div>
8151       <div class="body">
8152         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
8153 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
8154 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
8155 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
8156 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
8157 long time.</p>
8158
8159       </div>
8160       <div class="tags">
8161
8162
8163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8164
8165
8166       </div>
8167     </div>
8168     <div class="padding"></div>
8169
8170     <div class="entry">
8171       <div class="title">
8172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
8173       </div>
8174       <div class="date">
8175          9th August 2010
8176       </div>
8177       <div class="body">
8178         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
8179 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
8180 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
8181 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
8182 generated configuration.</p>
8183
8184 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
8185 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
8186 without any manual configuration.</p>
8187
8188 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
8189 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
8190 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
8191 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
8192 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
8193 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
8194 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
8195 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
8196 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
8197 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
8198 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
8199 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
8200 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
8201 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
8202 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
8203 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
8204 use.</p>
8205
8206 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
8207 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
8208 working properly out of the box:</p>
8209
8210 <ul>
8211 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
8212 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
8213 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
8214 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
8215 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
8216 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
8217 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
8218 </ul>
8219
8220 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
8221
8222 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
8223 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
8224 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
8225 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
8226 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
8227
8228 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
8229 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
8230 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
8231 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
8232 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
8233 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
8234 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
8235 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
8236
8237 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
8238 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
8239 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
8240 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
8241 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
8242 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
8243 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
8244 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
8245 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
8246 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
8247 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
8248 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
8249 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
8250 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
8251 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
8252 current DNS domain is used.</p>
8253
8254 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
8255 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
8256 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
8257 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
8258 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
8259 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
8260 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
8261 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
8262 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
8263 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
8264 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
8265 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
8266 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
8267
8268 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
8269 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
8270 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
8271 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
8272 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
8273 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
8274 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
8275 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
8276 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
8277 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
8278 do for now. :)</p>
8279
8280 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
8281 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
8282 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
8283 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
8284 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
8285 yet.</p>
8286
8287 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
8288 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8289
8290 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
8291 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
8292 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
8293 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
8294
8295       </div>
8296       <div class="tags">
8297
8298
8299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8300
8301
8302       </div>
8303     </div>
8304     <div class="padding"></div>
8305
8306     <div class="entry">
8307       <div class="title">
8308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
8309       </div>
8310       <div class="date">
8311          8th August 2010
8312       </div>
8313       <div class="body">
8314         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
8315 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
8316 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
8317 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
8318 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
8319 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
8320 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
8321
8322 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
8323 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
8324 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
8325 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
8326 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
8327 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
8328 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
8329
8330 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
8331 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
8332 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
8333 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
8334 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
8335
8336 <pre>
8337 /*
8338  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
8339  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
8340  * directory.
8341  * License: GPL v2 or later
8342  *
8343  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
8344  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
8345 */
8346
8347 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
8348 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
8349 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
8350
8351 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
8352
8353 #include &lt;errno.h>
8354 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
8355 #include &lt;stdio.h>
8356 #include &lt;string.h>
8357 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
8358 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
8359 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
8360 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
8361 #include &lt;unistd.h>
8362
8363 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
8364 /*
8365  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
8366  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
8367  * below.
8368  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
8369  */
8370 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
8371 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
8372   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
8373 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
8374   char *zErrMsg;
8375   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
8376   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
8377   unlink(name);
8378   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
8379   if( rc ){
8380     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
8381     sqlite3_close(db);
8382     return -1;
8383   }
8384
8385   /* create tables */
8386   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
8387   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
8388     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
8389     sqlite3_close(db);
8390     return -1;
8391   }
8392   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
8393   sqlite3_close(db);
8394   return 0;
8395 }
8396 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
8397
8398 /*
8399  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
8400  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
8401  * done in the sqlite3 library.
8402  * See also
8403  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
8404  * POSIX specification
8405  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
8406  */
8407 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
8408   struct flock fl;
8409   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
8410   unlink(name);
8411   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
8412   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
8413
8414   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
8415   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
8416   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
8417   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
8418   fl.l_len    = 1;
8419   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
8420   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8421
8422   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
8423   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
8424   fl.l_len    = 510;
8425   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
8426   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8427
8428   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
8429   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
8430   fl.l_len    = 1;
8431   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
8432   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8433
8434   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
8435   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
8436   fl.l_len    = 1;
8437   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
8438   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8439
8440   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
8441   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
8442   fl.l_len    = 510;
8443   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8444
8445   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
8446   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
8447   fl.l_len    = 2;
8448   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
8449   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
8450
8451   close(fd);
8452   return 0;
8453 }
8454
8455 /*
8456  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
8457  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
8458  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
8459  * slowing down file operations.
8460  */
8461 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
8462 #define LEVELS 5
8463   char *path = strdup("test");
8464   char *dirs[LEVELS];
8465   int level;
8466   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
8467   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
8468     char *newpath = NULL;
8469     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
8470       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
8471              path, strerror(errno));
8472       break;
8473     }
8474     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
8475     free(path);
8476     path = newpath;
8477   }
8478   return 0;
8479 }
8480
8481 /*
8482  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
8483  * KDE.
8484  */
8485 int test_symlinks(void) {
8486   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
8487   unlink("symlink");
8488   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
8489     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
8490   return 0;
8491 }
8492
8493 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
8494   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
8495   test_symlinks();
8496   test_subdirectory_creation();
8497 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
8498   test_sqlite_open();
8499 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
8500   test_gcompris_locking();
8501   return 0;
8502 }
8503 </pre>
8504
8505 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
8506 this:</p>
8507
8508 <pre>
8509 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
8510 info: testing symlink creation
8511 info: testing subdirectory creation
8512 info: sqlite worked
8513 info: testing fcntl locking
8514   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8515   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8516   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
8517   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8518   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8519   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
8520 </pre>
8521
8522 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
8523 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
8524 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
8525 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
8526 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
8527 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
8528 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
8529 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
8530
8531 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
8532 it. :)</p>
8533
8534 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
8535 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
8536 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
8537
8538       </div>
8539       <div class="tags">
8540
8541
8542         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8543
8544
8545       </div>
8546     </div>
8547     <div class="padding"></div>
8548
8549     <div class="entry">
8550       <div class="title">
8551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
8552       </div>
8553       <div class="date">
8554          7th August 2010
8555       </div>
8556       <div class="body">
8557         <p>A few days ago, I
8558 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
8559 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
8560 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
8561 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
8562 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
8563 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
8564 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
8565 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
8566 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
8567
8568 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
8569 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
8570 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
8571 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
8572 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
8573 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
8574 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
8575 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
8576 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
8577 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
8578 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
8579 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
8580 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
8581 gave it a IP address.</p>
8582
8583 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
8584 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
8585 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
8586 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
8587 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
8588 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
8589 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
8590 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
8591
8592 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
8593 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
8594 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
8595 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
8596 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
8597 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
8598
8599 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
8600 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
8601 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
8602 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
8603 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
8604 with UID and GID values.</p>
8605
8606 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
8607 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8608
8609       </div>
8610       <div class="tags">
8611
8612
8613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8614
8615
8616       </div>
8617     </div>
8618     <div class="padding"></div>
8619
8620     <div class="entry">
8621       <div class="title">
8622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
8623       </div>
8624       <div class="date">
8625          3rd August 2010
8626       </div>
8627       <div class="body">
8628         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
8629 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
8630 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
8631 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
8632 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
8633 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
8634 servers.</p>
8635
8636 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
8637 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
8638 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
8639 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
8640 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
8641 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
8642 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
8643 .uio.no.</p>
8644
8645 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
8646 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
8647 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
8648 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
8649 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
8650 university servers.</p>
8651
8652 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
8653 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
8654 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
8655 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
8656 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
8657 uses.</p>
8658
8659       </div>
8660       <div class="tags">
8661
8662
8663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8664
8665
8666       </div>
8667     </div>
8668     <div class="padding"></div>
8669
8670     <div class="entry">
8671       <div class="title">
8672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
8673       </div>
8674       <div class="date">
8675         27th July 2010
8676       </div>
8677       <div class="body">
8678         <p>I discovered this while doing
8679 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
8680 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
8681 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
8682 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
8683 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
8684
8685 <p>An example is from todays
8686 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
8687 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
8688 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
8689 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
8690 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
8691 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
8692 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
8693
8694 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
8695
8696 <blockquote><pre>
8697 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
8698  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
8699   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
8700 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
8701  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
8702 </pre></blockquote>
8703
8704 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
8705 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
8706 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
8707 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
8708 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
8709 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
8710 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
8711 of dependency loops.</p>
8712
8713 <p>Thanks to
8714 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
8715 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
8716 dependencies
8717 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
8718 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
8719
8720 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
8721 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
8722 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
8723 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
8724 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
8725 it.</p>
8726
8727       </div>
8728       <div class="tags">
8729
8730
8731         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8732
8733
8734       </div>
8735     </div>
8736     <div class="padding"></div>
8737
8738     <div class="entry">
8739       <div class="title">
8740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
8741       </div>
8742       <div class="date">
8743         27th July 2010
8744       </div>
8745       <div class="body">
8746         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
8747 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
8748 completed.</p>
8749
8750 <blockquote>
8751 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
8752 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
8753 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
8754 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
8755 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
8756 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
8757 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
8758 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
8759
8760 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
8761 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
8762 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
8763
8764 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
8765 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
8766 much.</p>
8767
8768 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
8769
8770 <ul>
8771 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
8772 <ul>
8773   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
8774          combination with some new artwork
8775   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
8776   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
8777   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
8778   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
8779   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
8780   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
8781   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
8782   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
8783   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
8784 </ul></li>
8785 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
8786     Enabled for:
8787 <ul>
8788   <li>PAM
8789   <li>LDAP
8790   <li>IMAP
8791   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
8792 </ul>
8793 </li>
8794 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
8795 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
8796     fetched from LDAP.</li>
8797 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
8798 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
8799 </ul>
8800 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
8801
8802 <ul>
8803 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
8804     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
8805     for testing.</li>
8806 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
8807     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
8808     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
8809 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
8810 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
8811 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
8812 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
8813     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
8814 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
8815     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
8816     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
8817 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
8818     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
8819     and help out with translations.</li>
8820 </ul>
8821
8822 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
8823
8824 <ul>
8825 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
8826 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
8827 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8828 </ul>
8829 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
8830
8831 <ul>
8832 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
8833 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
8834 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8835 </ul>
8836
8837 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
8838 get closer to the final release.</p>
8839
8840 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
8841
8842 <ul>
8843 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8844 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8845 </ul>
8846
8847 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
8848 <ul>
8849 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8850 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8851 </ul>
8852 <p>How to report bugs:
8853 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
8854
8855 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
8856 </blockquote>
8857
8858       </div>
8859       <div class="tags">
8860
8861
8862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8863
8864
8865       </div>
8866     </div>
8867     <div class="padding"></div>
8868
8869     <div class="entry">
8870       <div class="title">
8871         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
8872       </div>
8873       <div class="date">
8874         25th July 2010
8875       </div>
8876       <div class="body">
8877         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
8878 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
8879 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
8880 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
8881 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
8882
8883 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
8884 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
8885 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
8886 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
8887 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
8888 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
8889 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
8890
8891 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
8892 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
8893 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
8894 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
8895 up. :)</p>
8896
8897 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
8898 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
8899 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
8900
8901 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
8902 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
8903 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
8904 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
8905 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
8906 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
8907 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
8908 release another day.</p>
8909
8910 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
8911 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8912
8913       </div>
8914       <div class="tags">
8915
8916
8917         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8918
8919
8920       </div>
8921     </div>
8922     <div class="padding"></div>
8923
8924     <div class="entry">
8925       <div class="title">
8926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
8927       </div>
8928       <div class="date">
8929         18th July 2010
8930       </div>
8931       <div class="body">
8932         <p>Thanks to
8933 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
8934 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
8935 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
8936 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
8937 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
8938 only available from the development server, until more experience is
8939 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
8940
8941 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
8942 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
8943 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
8944 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
8945 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
8946 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
8947 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
8948
8949       </div>
8950       <div class="tags">
8951
8952
8953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8954
8955
8956       </div>
8957     </div>
8958     <div class="padding"></div>
8959
8960     <div class="entry">
8961       <div class="title">
8962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
8963       </div>
8964       <div class="date">
8965         17th July 2010
8966       </div>
8967       <div class="body">
8968         <p>This is a
8969 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8970 on my
8971 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
8972 work</a> on
8973 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8974 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8975
8976 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8977 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8978 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8979 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8980
8981 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8982 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8983 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8984
8985 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8986
8987 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8988 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8989 the web.
8990
8991 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8992 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8993 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8994 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8995 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8996 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8997
8998 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8999 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
9000 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
9001 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
9002 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
9003 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
9004 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
9005 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
9006 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
9007 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
9008 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
9009 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
9010 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
9011 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
9012 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
9013 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
9014
9015 <blockquote><pre>
9016 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9017   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9018   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9019   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9020   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9021   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9022   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9023
9024 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9025   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9026   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
9027   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
9028   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
9029   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
9030 </pre></blockquote>
9031
9032 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
9033 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
9034 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
9035 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9036 also exist.</p>
9037
9038 <blockquote><pre>
9039 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9040 objectclass: top
9041 objectclass: dnsdomain
9042 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9043 dc: tjener
9044 arecord: 10.0.2.2
9045 associateddomain: tjener.intern
9046
9047 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9048 objectclass: top
9049 objectclass: dnsdomain2
9050 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9051 dc: 2
9052 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
9053 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
9054 </pre></blockquote>
9055
9056 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
9057 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
9058 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
9059 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
9060 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
9061 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
9062 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
9063 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
9064 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
9065 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
9066 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
9067 instead.</p>
9068
9069 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
9070 like this:</p>
9071
9072 <blockquote><pre>
9073 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9074   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9075   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9076   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9077   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9078   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9079
9080 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9081   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
9082 </pre></blockquote>
9083
9084 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
9085 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
9086 reverse lookups.</p>
9087
9088 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
9089 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
9090 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
9091 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
9092
9093 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
9094 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
9095 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
9096
9097 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
9098 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
9099 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
9100 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
9101 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
9102
9103 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
9104 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
9105 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
9106 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
9107 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
9108
9109 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
9110 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
9111 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
9112 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
9113 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
9114 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
9115
9116 <blockquote><pre>
9117 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
9118     SUP top
9119     AUXILIARY
9120     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
9121           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
9122           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
9123           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
9124           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
9125     ))
9126 </pre></blockquote>
9127
9128 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
9129 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
9130 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
9131 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
9132 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
9133 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
9134
9135 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
9136
9137 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
9138 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
9139 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
9140 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
9141 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
9142
9143 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
9144 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
9145 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
9146 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
9147
9148 <blockquote><pre>
9149 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
9150 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
9151 </pre></blockquote>
9152
9153 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
9154 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
9155 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
9156 search result is this entry:</p>
9157
9158 <blockquote><pre>
9159 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9160 cn: dhcp
9161 objectClass: top
9162 objectClass: dhcpServer
9163 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9164 </pre></blockquote>
9165
9166 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
9167 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
9168 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
9169 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
9170 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
9171 The search result is this entry:</p>
9172
9173 <blockquote><pre>
9174 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9175 cn: DHCP Config
9176 objectClass: top
9177 objectClass: dhcpService
9178 objectClass: dhcpOptions
9179 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9180 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
9181 dhcpStatements: authoritative
9182 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
9183 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
9184 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
9185 </pre></blockquote>
9186
9187 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
9188 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
9189 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
9190 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
9191 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
9192 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
9193 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
9194 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
9195 related computer objects.</p>
9196
9197 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
9198 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
9199 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
9200 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
9201 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
9202 like:</p>
9203
9204 <blockquote><pre>
9205 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9206 cn: hostname
9207 objectClass: top
9208 objectClass: dhcpHost
9209 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9210 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
9211 </pre></blockquote>
9212
9213 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
9214 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
9215 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
9216 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
9217 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
9218 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
9219 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
9220 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
9221 structural object class.
9222
9223 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
9224
9225 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
9226 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
9227 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
9228 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
9229 in the configuration.</p>
9230
9231 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
9232 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
9233 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
9234 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
9235 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
9236 structure.</p>
9237
9238 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
9239 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
9240
9241 <blockquote><pre>
9242 ou=services
9243   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
9244     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
9245     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9246       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9247         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9248     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9249       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9250         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9251     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
9252       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
9253 </pre></blockquote>
9254
9255 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
9256 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
9257 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
9258 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
9259
9260 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
9261 like this:</p>
9262
9263 <blockquote><pre>
9264 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9265 dc: hostname
9266 objectClass: top
9267 objectClass: dhcpHost
9268 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9269 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
9270 associateddomain: hostname.intern
9271 arecord: 10.11.12.13
9272 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9273 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
9274 </pre></blockquote>
9275
9276 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
9277 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
9278 auxiliary object class.</p>
9279
9280       </div>
9281       <div class="tags">
9282
9283
9284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9285
9286
9287       </div>
9288     </div>
9289     <div class="padding"></div>
9290
9291     <div class="entry">
9292       <div class="title">
9293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
9294       </div>
9295       <div class="date">
9296         14th July 2010
9297       </div>
9298       <div class="body">
9299         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
9300 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
9301 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
9302 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
9303 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
9304
9305 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
9306 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
9307
9308 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
9309 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
9310 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
9311 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
9312 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
9313 to a slave DNS server.</p>
9314
9315 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
9316 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
9317 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
9318 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
9319 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
9320 seem to work.</p>
9321
9322 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
9323 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
9324 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
9325 this:</p>
9326
9327 <blockquote><pre>
9328   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9329   cn: hostname
9330   objectClass: dhcphost
9331   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9332   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
9333   associateddomain: hostname.intern
9334   arecord: 10.11.12.13
9335   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9336   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
9337   ldapconfigsound: Y
9338 </pre></blockquote>
9339
9340 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
9341 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
9342 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
9343 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
9344
9345 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
9346 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
9347 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
9348 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
9349 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
9350 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
9351 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
9352 might be a good place to put it.</p>
9353
9354 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9355 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9356
9357       </div>
9358       <div class="tags">
9359
9360
9361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9362
9363
9364       </div>
9365     </div>
9366     <div class="padding"></div>
9367
9368     <div class="entry">
9369       <div class="title">
9370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
9371       </div>
9372       <div class="date">
9373         11th July 2010
9374       </div>
9375       <div class="body">
9376         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
9377 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
9378 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
9379 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
9380
9381 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
9382 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
9383 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
9384 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
9385 LTSP clients.</p>
9386
9387 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
9388 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
9389 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
9390
9391 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
9392 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
9393 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
9394
9395 <blockquote><pre>
9396 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
9397 #
9398 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
9399 #
9400 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
9401 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
9402 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
9403 #
9404 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
9405 # existence of attribute names.
9406 #
9407 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
9408 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
9409 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
9410 #
9411 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
9412 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
9413 #
9414 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
9415 #     SUP top
9416 #     AUXILIARY
9417 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
9418
9419 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
9420 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
9421     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
9422     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
9423         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
9424         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
9425             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
9426             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
9427             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
9428             # bass value on to clients
9429             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
9430         done
9431     done
9432 fi
9433 </pre></blockquote>
9434
9435 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
9436 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
9437 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
9438 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
9439 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
9440
9441 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9442 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9443
9444 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
9445 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
9446 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
9447 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
9448 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
9449 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
9450
9451       </div>
9452       <div class="tags">
9453
9454
9455         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9456
9457
9458       </div>
9459     </div>
9460     <div class="padding"></div>
9461
9462     <div class="entry">
9463       <div class="title">
9464         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9465       </div>
9466       <div class="date">
9467          9th July 2010
9468       </div>
9469       <div class="body">
9470         <p>Since
9471 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
9472 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
9473 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
9474 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
9475 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
9476 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
9477 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
9478 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
9479 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
9480 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
9481 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
9482 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
9483 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
9484
9485       </div>
9486       <div class="tags">
9487
9488
9489         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9490
9491
9492       </div>
9493     </div>
9494     <div class="padding"></div>
9495
9496     <div class="entry">
9497       <div class="title">
9498         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
9499       </div>
9500       <div class="date">
9501          3rd July 2010
9502       </div>
9503       <div class="body">
9504         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
9505 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
9506 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
9507 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
9508 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
9509 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
9510 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
9511 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
9512
9513 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
9514 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
9515 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
9516 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
9517 publish the difference.</p>
9518
9519 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9520
9521 <blockquote><p>
9522   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9523   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
9524   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
9525   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9526   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
9527   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9528   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
9529   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
9530 </p></blockquote>
9531
9532 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9533
9534 <blockquote><p>
9535   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
9536   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
9537   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
9538   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
9539   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
9540   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
9541   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9542   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9543   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9544   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9545   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
9546   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
9547   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
9548   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
9549   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
9550   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9551   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
9552   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
9553   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
9554   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
9555 </p></blockquote>
9556
9557 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9558
9559 <blockquote><p>
9560   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
9561   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
9562   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9563   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9564   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
9565   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
9566   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
9567   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9568   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9569   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9570   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9571   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
9572   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
9573   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
9574   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
9575   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
9576   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
9577   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
9578   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
9579   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
9580   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
9581 </p></blockquote>
9582
9583 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9584
9585 <blockquote><p>
9586   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
9587   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
9588   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
9589 </p></blockquote>
9590
9591 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
9592 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
9593 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
9594 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
9595 the difference somewhat.
9596
9597       </div>
9598       <div class="tags">
9599
9600
9601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9602
9603
9604       </div>
9605     </div>
9606     <div class="padding"></div>
9607
9608     <div class="entry">
9609       <div class="title">
9610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
9611       </div>
9612       <div class="date">
9613          1st July 2010
9614       </div>
9615       <div class="body">
9616         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
9617 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
9618 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
9619 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
9620 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
9621 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
9622 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
9623 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
9624 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
9625
9626 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
9627
9628 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
9629 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
9630 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
9631 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
9632 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
9633 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
9634 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
9635 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
9636 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
9637 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
9638 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
9639 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
9640 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
9641 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
9642 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
9643
9644 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
9645
9646 <blockquote><pre>
9647 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
9648 </pre></blockquote>
9649
9650 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
9651 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
9652 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
9653 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
9654 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
9655 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
9656 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
9657 on how to get this working.</p>
9658
9659 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
9660 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
9661 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
9662 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
9663 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
9664 instructions I found in the
9665 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
9666 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
9667
9668 <blockquote><pre>
9669         debug-level             0
9670         reload-count            unlimited
9671         paranoia                no
9672
9673         enable-cache            passwd          yes
9674         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
9675         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
9676         suggested-size          passwd          211
9677         check-files             passwd          yes
9678         persistent              passwd          yes
9679         shared                  passwd          yes
9680         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
9681         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
9682
9683         enable-cache            group           yes
9684         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
9685         negative-time-to-live   group           20
9686         suggested-size          group           211
9687         check-files             group           yes
9688         persistent              group           yes
9689         shared                  group           yes
9690         max-db-size             group           33554432
9691         auto-propagate          group           yes
9692
9693         enable-cache            hosts           no
9694         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
9695         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
9696         suggested-size          hosts           211
9697         check-files             hosts           yes
9698         persistent              hosts           yes
9699         shared                  hosts           yes
9700         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
9701
9702         enable-cache            services        yes
9703         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
9704         negative-time-to-live   services        20
9705         suggested-size          services        211
9706         check-files             services        yes
9707         persistent              services        yes
9708         shared                  services        yes
9709         max-db-size             services        33554432
9710 </pre></blockquote>
9711
9712 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
9713 automatically like the one provided in
9714 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
9715 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
9716 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
9717 look like this:</p>
9718
9719 <blockquote><pre>
9720 passwd:         files ldap
9721 group:          files ldap
9722 shadow:         files ldap
9723 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
9724 networks:       files
9725 protocols:      files
9726 services:       files
9727 ethers:         files
9728 rpc:            files
9729 netgroup:       files ldap
9730 </pre></blockquote>
9731
9732 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
9733 shadow and netgroup.</p>
9734
9735 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
9736 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
9737 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
9738 attributes cached.
9739
9740 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
9741   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
9742
9743 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
9744 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
9745 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
9746 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
9747 discovered sssd.</p>
9748
9749 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
9750
9751 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
9752 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
9753 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
9754 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
9755 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
9756 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
9757 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
9758 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
9759 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
9760 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
9761 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
9762 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
9763 version 1.2 is now in testing.
9764
9765 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
9766 roaming setup I want</p>
9767
9768 <blockquote><pre>
9769 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
9770 </pre></blockquote>
9771
9772 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
9773 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
9774
9775 <blockquote><pre>
9776 [sssd]
9777 config_file_version = 2
9778 reconnection_retries = 3
9779 sbus_timeout = 30
9780 services = nss, pam
9781 domains = INTERN
9782
9783 [nss]
9784 filter_groups = root
9785 filter_users = root
9786 reconnection_retries = 3
9787
9788 [pam]
9789 reconnection_retries = 3
9790
9791 [domain/INTERN]
9792 enumerate = false
9793 cache_credentials = true
9794
9795 id_provider = ldap
9796 auth_provider = ldap
9797 chpass_provider = ldap
9798
9799 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
9800 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9801 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
9802 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
9803 </pre></blockquote>
9804
9805 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
9806 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
9807
9808 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
9809 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
9810 modify it manually.</p>
9811
9812 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9813 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9814
9815       </div>
9816       <div class="tags">
9817
9818
9819         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9820
9821
9822       </div>
9823     </div>
9824     <div class="padding"></div>
9825
9826     <div class="entry">
9827       <div class="title">
9828         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9829       </div>
9830       <div class="date">
9831         28th June 2010
9832       </div>
9833       <div class="body">
9834         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
9835 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
9836 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
9837 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
9838 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
9839 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
9840 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
9841 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
9842 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
9843 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
9844
9845 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
9846 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
9847 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
9848 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
9849 released.</p>
9850
9851 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
9852 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
9853 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
9854 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
9855
9856 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
9857 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9858
9859 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
9860 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
9861 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
9862 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
9863 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
9864
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="tags">
9867
9868
9869         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9870
9871
9872       </div>
9873     </div>
9874     <div class="padding"></div>
9875
9876     <div class="entry">
9877       <div class="title">
9878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
9879       </div>
9880       <div class="date">
9881         24th June 2010
9882       </div>
9883       <div class="body">
9884         <p>A while back, I
9885 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
9886 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
9887 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
9888 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
9889
9890 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
9891 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
9892 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
9893 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
9894
9895 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
9896 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
9897 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
9898 Debian Edu.</p>
9899
9900 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
9901 the
9902 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
9903 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
9904 available today from IETF.</p>
9905
9906 <pre>
9907 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
9908 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
9909 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
9910  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
9911         NAME 'dhcpHost'
9912         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
9913 -       SUP top
9914 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
9915         MUST cn
9916         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
9917         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
9918 </pre>
9919
9920 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
9921 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
9922 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
9923
9924 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9925 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9926
9927       </div>
9928       <div class="tags">
9929
9930
9931         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9932
9933
9934       </div>
9935     </div>
9936     <div class="padding"></div>
9937
9938     <div class="entry">
9939       <div class="title">
9940         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
9941       </div>
9942       <div class="date">
9943         16th June 2010
9944       </div>
9945       <div class="body">
9946         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
9947 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
9948 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
9949 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
9950 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
9951 this:
9952
9953 <blockquote><pre>
9954 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9955 tasksel --new-install
9956 </pre></blockquote>
9957
9958 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
9959 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
9960 any output what so ever.
9961
9962 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
9963 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
9964 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
9965 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
9966 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
9967 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
9968 code like this:
9969
9970 <blockquote><pre>
9971 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9972 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
9973 $cmd
9974 </pre></blockquote>
9975
9976 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
9977 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
9978 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
9979 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
9980 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
9981 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
9982 installation.</p>
9983
9984 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
9985 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
9986 like this.</p>
9987
9988       </div>
9989       <div class="tags">
9990
9991
9992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9993
9994
9995       </div>
9996     </div>
9997     <div class="padding"></div>
9998
9999     <div class="entry">
10000       <div class="title">
10001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
10002       </div>
10003       <div class="date">
10004         13th June 2010
10005       </div>
10006       <div class="body">
10007         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
10008 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
10009 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
10010 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
10011 pages.</p>
10012
10013 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
10014 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
10015 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
10016 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
10017 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
10018 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
10019 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
10020 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
10021 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
10022 see how the project is doing.</p>
10023
10024 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
10025 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
10026 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
10027 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
10028 Windows.  This is great.</p>
10029
10030       </div>
10031       <div class="tags">
10032
10033
10034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10035
10036
10037       </div>
10038     </div>
10039     <div class="padding"></div>
10040
10041     <div class="entry">
10042       <div class="title">
10043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
10044       </div>
10045       <div class="date">
10046         13th June 2010
10047       </div>
10048       <div class="body">
10049         <p>My
10050 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
10051 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
10052 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10053 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
10054 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10055 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
10056 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
10057
10058 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10059 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
10060 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
10061 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
10062 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
10063 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
10064 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
10065 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
10066
10067 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
10068 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
10069 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
10070 too surprising.</p>
10071
10072 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
10073 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
10074 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
10075 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
10076 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
10077 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
10078 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
10079 continue.</p>
10080
10081 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
10082 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
10083   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
10084   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
10085   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
10086   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
10087   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
10088   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10089   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10090   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10091   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10092   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10093   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10094   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10095   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10096   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10097   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10098   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10099   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10100   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10101   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10102   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10103   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10104   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10105   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10106   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10107   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10108   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10109   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
10110   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
10111
10112 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
10113
10114 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
10115   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
10116   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
10117   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
10118   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10119   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
10120   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
10121   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
10122   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
10123   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
10124   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10125   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
10126   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10127   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
10128   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
10129   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
10130   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
10131   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
10132   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
10133   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
10134   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
10135   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
10136   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
10137   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
10138   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10139   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
10140   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
10141   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
10142   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
10143   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10144   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10145   zip</p>
10146
10147 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
10148
10149 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
10150   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
10151   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
10152   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
10153   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
10154   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
10155   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10156   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10157   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10158   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10159   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10160   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10161   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10162   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10163   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10164   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10165   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10166   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10167   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10168   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10169   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10170   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10171   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10172   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10173   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10174   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10175   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10176   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
10177
10178 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
10179 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
10180   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10181   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
10182   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
10183   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10184   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
10185   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
10186   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10187   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
10188   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
10189   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
10190   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
10191   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
10192   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
10193   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
10194   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
10195   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10196   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10197   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10198   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
10199   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10200   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
10201   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
10202   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10203   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10204   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
10205   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
10206   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
10207   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
10208   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
10209   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
10210   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
10211   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
10212   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
10213   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10214   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10215   xulrunner-1.9</p>
10216
10217
10218       </div>
10219       <div class="tags">
10220
10221
10222         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10223
10224
10225       </div>
10226     </div>
10227     <div class="padding"></div>
10228
10229     <div class="entry">
10230       <div class="title">
10231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
10232       </div>
10233       <div class="date">
10234         11th June 2010
10235       </div>
10236       <div class="body">
10237         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
10238 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
10239 have been discovered and reported in the process
10240 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
10241 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
10242 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
10243 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
10244 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
10245
10246 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
10247 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
10248 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
10249 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
10250 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
10251 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
10252
10253 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
10254 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
10255 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10256 is created.  The bug report
10257 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
10258 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
10259 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
10260 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
10261 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
10262 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
10263 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
10264 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
10265 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
10266 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
10267 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
10268 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
10269 Debian Squeeze.</p>
10270
10271 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
10272 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
10273 trick:</p>
10274
10275 <blockquote><pre>
10276 #!/bin/sh
10277 set -ex
10278
10279 if [ "$1" ] ; then
10280     desktop=$1
10281 else
10282     desktop=gnome
10283 fi
10284
10285 from=lenny
10286 to=squeeze
10287
10288 exec &lt; /dev/null
10289 unset LANG
10290 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
10291 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
10292 fuser -mv .
10293 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
10294 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10295 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
10296 #!/bin/sh
10297 exit 101
10298 EOF
10299 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
10300 exit_cleanup() {
10301     umount $tmpdir/proc
10302 }
10303 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
10304 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
10305 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
10306
10307 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
10308
10309 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
10310 # to return the correct answers.
10311 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
10312     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
10313
10314 # Include the desktop and laptop task
10315 for test in desktop laptop ; do
10316     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
10317 #!/bin/sh
10318 exit 2
10319 EOF
10320     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
10321 done
10322
10323 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10324 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
10325 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
10326 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
10327
10328 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
10329 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10330 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10331 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
10332 fuser -mv
10333 </pre></blockquote>
10334
10335 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
10336 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
10337 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
10338 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
10339 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
10340 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
10341
10342 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
10343 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
10344 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
10345 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
10346 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
10347 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
10348 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
10349
10350 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
10351 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
10352 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
10353 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
10354 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
10355 packages.</p>
10356
10357       </div>
10358       <div class="tags">
10359
10360
10361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10362
10363
10364       </div>
10365     </div>
10366     <div class="padding"></div>
10367
10368     <div class="entry">
10369       <div class="title">
10370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
10371       </div>
10372       <div class="date">
10373          6th June 2010
10374       </div>
10375       <div class="body">
10376         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
10377 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
10378 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
10379 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
10380 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
10381 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
10382 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
10383
10384 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
10385 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
10386 COLUMNS):</p>
10387
10388 <blockquote><pre>
10389 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
10390 previous=N
10391 PREVLEVEL=
10392 RUNLEVEL=
10393 runlevel=S
10394 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
10395 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
10396 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
10397 </pre></blockquote>
10398
10399 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
10400 script.</p>
10401
10402 <blockquote><pre>
10403 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
10404 previous=N
10405 PREVLEVEL=N
10406 RUNLEVEL=S
10407 runlevel=S
10408 </pre></blockquote>
10409
10410 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
10411 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
10412 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
10413
10414 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
10415 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
10416 choice.</p>
10417
10418       </div>
10419       <div class="tags">
10420
10421
10422         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10423
10424
10425       </div>
10426     </div>
10427     <div class="padding"></div>
10428
10429     <div class="entry">
10430       <div class="title">
10431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
10432       </div>
10433       <div class="date">
10434          6th June 2010
10435       </div>
10436       <div class="body">
10437         <p>Via the
10438 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
10439 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
10440 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
10441 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
10442 following the standards wars of today.</p>
10443
10444       </div>
10445       <div class="tags">
10446
10447
10448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10449
10450
10451       </div>
10452     </div>
10453     <div class="padding"></div>
10454
10455     <div class="entry">
10456       <div class="title">
10457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
10458       </div>
10459       <div class="date">
10460          3rd June 2010
10461       </div>
10462       <div class="body">
10463         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
10464 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
10465 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
10466 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
10467 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
10468
10469 <blockquote><pre>
10470 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
10471   vendor                    count
10472   Dell Computer Corporation     1
10473     PowerEdge 1750              1
10474   IBM                           1
10475     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
10476   Intel                         2
10477   [no-dmi-info]                 3
10478 maintainer:~#
10479 </pre></blockquote>
10480
10481 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
10482 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
10483 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
10484 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
10485 option to list the individual machines.</p>
10486
10487 <p>A larger list is
10488 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
10489 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
10490 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
10491 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
10492 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
10493 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
10494 collector.</p>
10495
10496       </div>
10497       <div class="tags">
10498
10499
10500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
10501
10502
10503       </div>
10504     </div>
10505     <div class="padding"></div>
10506
10507     <div class="entry">
10508       <div class="title">
10509         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
10510       </div>
10511       <div class="date">
10512          1st June 2010
10513       </div>
10514       <div class="body">
10515         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
10516 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
10517 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
10518 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
10519 wait.</p>
10520
10521 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
10522 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
10523 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
10524 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
10525 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
10526 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
10527
10528 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
10529 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
10530 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
10531 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
10532 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
10533 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
10534 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
10535 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
10536
10537 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
10538
10539       </div>
10540       <div class="tags">
10541
10542
10543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10544
10545
10546       </div>
10547     </div>
10548     <div class="padding"></div>
10549
10550     <div class="entry">
10551       <div class="title">
10552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
10553       </div>
10554       <div class="date">
10555         27th May 2010
10556       </div>
10557       <div class="body">
10558         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
10559 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
10560 issues are known and should be solved:
10561
10562 <p><ul>
10563
10564 <li>The wicd package seen to
10565 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
10566 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
10567 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
10568 seem to be on the case.</li>
10569
10570 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
10571 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
10572 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
10573 maintainer is on the case.</li>
10574
10575 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
10576 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
10577 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
10578 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
10579 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
10580 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
10581 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
10582 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
10583
10584 </ul></p>
10585
10586 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
10587 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
10588 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
10589 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
10590
10591 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10592 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10593 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10594 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10595
10596 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
10597
10598       </div>
10599       <div class="tags">
10600
10601
10602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10603
10604
10605       </div>
10606     </div>
10607     <div class="padding"></div>
10608
10609     <div class="entry">
10610       <div class="title">
10611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
10612       </div>
10613       <div class="date">
10614         22nd May 2010
10615       </div>
10616       <div class="body">
10617         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
10618 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
10619 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
10620 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
10621
10622 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
10623 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
10624 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
10625 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
10626 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
10627 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
10628 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
10629 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
10630 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
10631 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
10632 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
10633 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
10634 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
10635 going to work.</p>
10636
10637 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
10638 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
10639 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
10640 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
10641 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
10642 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
10643 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
10644 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
10645 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
10646 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
10647 Edu.</p>
10648
10649 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
10650 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
10651 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
10652 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
10653 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
10654 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
10655
10656 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
10657 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
10658
10659       </div>
10660       <div class="tags">
10661
10662
10663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10664
10665
10666       </div>
10667     </div>
10668     <div class="padding"></div>
10669
10670     <div class="entry">
10671       <div class="title">
10672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
10673       </div>
10674       <div class="date">
10675         19th May 2010
10676       </div>
10677       <div class="body">
10678         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
10679 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
10680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
10681 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
10682 into unstable.  The
10683 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
10684 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
10685 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
10686 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
10687 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
10688 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
10689 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
10690
10691 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
10692 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
10693 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
10694 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
10695 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
10696 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
10697 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
10698 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
10699
10700 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
10701 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
10702 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
10703 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
10704 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
10705 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
10706 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
10707
10708 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
10709 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
10710 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
10711 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
10712 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
10713 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
10714 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
10715 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
10716 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
10717 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
10718 on the home directory servers.</p>
10719
10720 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
10721 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
10722 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
10723 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
10724 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
10725 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
10726
10727 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10728 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10729
10730       </div>
10731       <div class="tags">
10732
10733
10734         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10735
10736
10737       </div>
10738     </div>
10739     <div class="padding"></div>
10740
10741     <div class="entry">
10742       <div class="title">
10743         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
10744       </div>
10745       <div class="date">
10746         14th May 2010
10747       </div>
10748       <div class="body">
10749         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
10750 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
10751 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
10752 expected, if I am to believe the
10753 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10754 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
10755 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
10756 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
10757 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
10758 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
10759 version.</p>
10760
10761 More information about
10762 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10763 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
10764 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
10765 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10766
10767 <blockquote><pre>
10768 CONCURRENCY=none
10769 </pre></blockquote>
10770
10771 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10772 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10773 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10774 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10775
10776       </div>
10777       <div class="tags">
10778
10779
10780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10781
10782
10783       </div>
10784     </div>
10785     <div class="padding"></div>
10786
10787     <div class="entry">
10788       <div class="title">
10789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
10790       </div>
10791       <div class="date">
10792         14th May 2010
10793       </div>
10794       <div class="body">
10795         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
10796 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
10797 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
10798 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
10799 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
10800 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
10801 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
10802 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
10803
10804 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
10805 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
10806 this on the collector host:</p>
10807
10808 <blockquote><pre>
10809 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
10810 </pre></blockquote>
10811
10812 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
10813 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
10814
10815 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
10816 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
10817 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
10818 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
10819 written yet.</p>
10820
10821       </div>
10822       <div class="tags">
10823
10824
10825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
10826
10827
10828       </div>
10829     </div>
10830     <div class="padding"></div>
10831
10832     <div class="entry">
10833       <div class="title">
10834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
10835       </div>
10836       <div class="date">
10837         13th May 2010
10838       </div>
10839       <div class="body">
10840         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
10841 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
10842 has been
10843 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
10844
10845 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
10846 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
10847 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
10848 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
10849 based boot system.  Tollef is
10850 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
10851 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
10852 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
10853 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
10854 at the moment do not.</p>
10855
10856 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
10857 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
10858 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
10859 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
10860 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
10861 way forward.</p>
10862
10863 <p>In the mean time, based on the
10864 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10865 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
10866 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
10867 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
10868 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
10869 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
10870 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
10871 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
10872
10873       </div>
10874       <div class="tags">
10875
10876
10877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10878
10879
10880       </div>
10881     </div>
10882     <div class="padding"></div>
10883
10884     <div class="entry">
10885       <div class="title">
10886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
10887       </div>
10888       <div class="date">
10889          6th May 2010
10890       </div>
10891       <div class="body">
10892         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
10893 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
10894 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
10895 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
10896 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10897 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
10898 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10899
10900 <blockquote><pre>
10901 CONCURRENCY=makefile
10902 </pre></blockquote>
10903
10904 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
10905 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
10906 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
10907 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
10908 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
10909 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
10910 make this happen.</p>
10911
10912 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
10913 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
10914 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
10915 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
10916 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
10917
10918 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
10919 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
10920 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
10921 fix the remaining issues.</p>
10922
10923 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10924 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10925 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10926 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10927
10928       </div>
10929       <div class="tags">
10930
10931
10932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10933
10934
10935       </div>
10936     </div>
10937     <div class="padding"></div>
10938
10939     <div class="entry">
10940       <div class="title">
10941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
10942       </div>
10943       <div class="date">
10944          2nd May 2010
10945       </div>
10946       <div class="body">
10947         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
10948 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
10949 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
10950
10951 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
10952 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
10953 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
10954 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
10955 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
10956
10957 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
10958 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
10959
10960 <blockquote><pre>
10961 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10962 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
10963 Password expires                                        : never
10964 Password inactive                                       : never
10965 Account expires                                         : never
10966 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10967 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
10968 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10969 root@tjener:~#
10970 </pre></blockquote>
10971
10972 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
10973 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
10974 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
10975 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
10976 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
10977 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
10978
10979 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
10980 intended:</p>
10981
10982 <blockquote><pre>
10983 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
10984 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10985 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
10986 Password expires                                        : never
10987 Password inactive                                       : never
10988 Account expires                                         : never
10989 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10990 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
10991 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10992 root@tjener:~#
10993 </pre></blockquote>
10994
10995 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
10996 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
10997 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
10998
10999 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
11000 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
11001
11002 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
11003 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11004
11005 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
11006 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
11007 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
11008 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
11009 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
11010 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
11011 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
11012
11013 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
11014 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
11015 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
11016 change.</p>
11017
11018       </div>
11019       <div class="tags">
11020
11021
11022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11023
11024
11025       </div>
11026     </div>
11027     <div class="padding"></div>
11028
11029     <div class="entry">
11030       <div class="title">
11031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
11032       </div>
11033       <div class="date">
11034         28th April 2010
11035       </div>
11036       <div class="body">
11037         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
11038 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
11039 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
11040 and go.</p>
11041
11042 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
11043 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
11044 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
11045 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
11046
11047 <ul>
11048
11049  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
11050    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
11051    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
11052    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
11053    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
11054    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
11055    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
11056    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
11057    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
11058    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
11059    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
11060    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
11061
11062  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
11063    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
11064    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
11065    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
11066    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
11067    or the Fedora developed
11068    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
11069    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
11070
11071  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
11072    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
11073    directory, using unison.</li>
11074
11075  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
11076    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
11077    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
11078    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
11079    implemented.</li>
11080
11081  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
11082    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
11083
11084  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
11085    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
11086    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
11087
11088 </ul>
11089
11090 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
11091 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
11092 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
11093 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
11094 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
11095 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
11096 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
11097 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
11098 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
11099
11100 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11101 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11102
11103       </div>
11104       <div class="tags">
11105
11106
11107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11108
11109
11110       </div>
11111     </div>
11112     <div class="padding"></div>
11113
11114     <div class="entry">
11115       <div class="title">
11116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
11117       </div>
11118       <div class="date">
11119         19th April 2010
11120       </div>
11121       <div class="body">
11122         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
11123 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
11124 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
11125 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
11126 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
11127 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
11128 restrictions on the web, for example from
11129 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
11130 epub-version from
11131 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
11132 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
11133 strongly recommend this book.</p>
11134
11135       </div>
11136       <div class="tags">
11137
11138
11139         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11140
11141
11142       </div>
11143     </div>
11144     <div class="padding"></div>
11145
11146     <div class="entry">
11147       <div class="title">
11148         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
11149       </div>
11150       <div class="date">
11151         14th April 2010
11152       </div>
11153       <div class="body">
11154         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
11155 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
11156 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
11157 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
11158 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
11159 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
11160 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
11161 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
11162 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
11163
11164 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
11165 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
11166 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
11167 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
11168 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
11169
11170 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
11171 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
11172
11173 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
11174 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
11175 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
11176 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
11177 to work properly.</p>
11178
11179 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
11180 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
11181 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
11182 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
11183 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
11184 time.</p>
11185
11186 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
11187 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
11188 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
11189 up in a few days.</p>
11190
11191       </div>
11192       <div class="tags">
11193
11194
11195         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11196
11197
11198       </div>
11199     </div>
11200     <div class="padding"></div>
11201
11202     <div class="entry">
11203       <div class="title">
11204         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
11205       </div>
11206       <div class="date">
11207          6th March 2010
11208       </div>
11209       <div class="body">
11210         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
11211 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
11212 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
11213 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
11214 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
11215 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
11216
11217 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
11218 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
11219 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
11220 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
11221
11222 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
11223 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
11224 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
11225 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
11226 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
11227 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
11228
11229       </div>
11230       <div class="tags">
11231
11232
11233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11234
11235
11236       </div>
11237     </div>
11238     <div class="padding"></div>
11239
11240     <div class="entry">
11241       <div class="title">
11242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
11243       </div>
11244       <div class="date">
11245         11th February 2010
11246       </div>
11247       <div class="body">
11248         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
11249 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
11250 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
11251 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
11252 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
11253 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
11254 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
11255
11256 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
11257
11258 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
11259 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
11260 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
11261 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
11262
11263       </div>
11264       <div class="tags">
11265
11266
11267         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11268
11269
11270       </div>
11271     </div>
11272     <div class="padding"></div>
11273
11274     <div class="entry">
11275       <div class="title">
11276         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
11277       </div>
11278       <div class="date">
11279         27th January 2010
11280       </div>
11281       <div class="body">
11282         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
11283 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
11284 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
11285 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
11286 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
11287 further.</p>
11288
11289 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
11290 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
11291 configured to be a server for the
11292 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
11293 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
11294 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
11295 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
11296 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
11297 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
11298 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
11299 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
11300 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
11301 and Nagios configuration.</p>
11302
11303 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
11304 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
11305 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
11306 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
11307
11308 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
11309 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
11310 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
11311 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
11312 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
11313 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
11314 the machine.</p>
11315
11316 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
11317 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
11318 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
11319 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
11320
11321 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
11322 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
11323 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
11324 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
11325 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
11326 everything is taken care of.</p>
11327
11328       </div>
11329       <div class="tags">
11330
11331
11332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
11333
11334
11335       </div>
11336     </div>
11337     <div class="padding"></div>
11338
11339     <div class="entry">
11340       <div class="title">
11341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
11342       </div>
11343       <div class="date">
11344         12th August 2009
11345       </div>
11346       <div class="body">
11347         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
11348 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
11349 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
11350 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
11351
11352 <table>
11353 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
11354 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
11355 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
11356 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
11357 </table>
11358
11359 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
11360 got these numbers:</p>
11361
11362 <table>
11363 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
11364 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
11365 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
11366 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
11367 </table>
11368
11369 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
11370
11371 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
11372 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
11373 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
11374 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
11375 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
11376
11377
11378 <table>
11379 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
11380 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
11381 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
11382 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
11383 </table>
11384
11385 <p>And with 'site:no':
11386
11387 <table>
11388 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
11389 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
11390 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
11391 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
11392 </table>
11393
11394 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
11395 numbers.</p>
11396
11397       </div>
11398       <div class="tags">
11399
11400
11401         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11402
11403
11404       </div>
11405     </div>
11406     <div class="padding"></div>
11407
11408     <div class="entry">
11409       <div class="title">
11410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
11411       </div>
11412       <div class="date">
11413          8th August 2009
11414       </div>
11415       <div class="body">
11416         <p>According to <a
11417 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
11418 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
11419 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
11420 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
11421 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
11422 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
11423 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
11424 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
11425 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
11426 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
11427
11428 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
11429 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
11430 seminar this autumn.</p>
11431
11432       </div>
11433       <div class="tags">
11434
11435
11436         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11437
11438
11439       </div>
11440     </div>
11441     <div class="padding"></div>
11442
11443     <div class="entry">
11444       <div class="title">
11445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
11446       </div>
11447       <div class="date">
11448         27th July 2009
11449       </div>
11450       <div class="body">
11451         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
11452 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
11453 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
11454 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
11455 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
11456 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
11457 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
11458
11459 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
11460 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
11461 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
11462
11463       </div>
11464       <div class="tags">
11465
11466
11467         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11468
11469
11470       </div>
11471     </div>
11472     <div class="padding"></div>
11473
11474     <div class="entry">
11475       <div class="title">
11476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
11477       </div>
11478       <div class="date">
11479         22nd July 2009
11480       </div>
11481       <div class="body">
11482         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11483 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11484 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
11485 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11486 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11487 the package up to date.</p>
11488
11489 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11490 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
11491 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11492 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11493 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11494 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
11495 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11496 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
11497 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
11498 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11499 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11500 working on the future release.</p>
11501
11502 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11503 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
11504
11505       </div>
11506       <div class="tags">
11507
11508
11509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11510
11511
11512       </div>
11513     </div>
11514     <div class="padding"></div>
11515
11516     <div class="entry">
11517       <div class="title">
11518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
11519       </div>
11520       <div class="date">
11521         24th June 2009
11522       </div>
11523       <div class="body">
11524         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11525 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11526 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
11527 funded
11528 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
11529 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
11530 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11531 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11532 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11533 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
11534
11535 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11536 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
11537 boot:</p>
11538
11539 <ul>
11540
11541 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
11542
11543 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11544    clock is in UTC.</li>
11545
11546 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11547    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11548    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
11549
11550 </ul>
11551
11552 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11553 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11554 Villegas</a>.
11555
11556 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11557 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11558 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11559 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11560 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11561 using this.</p>
11562
11563 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11564 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11565 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11566 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11567 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11568 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11569 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
11570
11571       </div>
11572       <div class="tags">
11573
11574
11575         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11576
11577
11578       </div>
11579     </div>
11580     <div class="padding"></div>
11581
11582     <div class="entry">
11583       <div class="title">
11584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
11585       </div>
11586       <div class="date">
11587          2nd May 2009
11588       </div>
11589       <div class="body">
11590         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11591 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11592 do not yet know them.</p>
11593
11594 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
11595 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11596 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
11597 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11598 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11599 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11600 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
11601 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
11602 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
11603 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11604 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11605
11606 <p>The second one is
11607 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
11608 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11609 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11610 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11611 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11612 and the company behind it is running
11613 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
11614 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11615 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11616 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
11617 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
11618 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
11619 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11620 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
11621
11622 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11623 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11624 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11625 surrounded by today.</p>
11626
11627       </div>
11628       <div class="tags">
11629
11630
11631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11632
11633
11634       </div>
11635     </div>
11636     <div class="padding"></div>
11637
11638     <div class="entry">
11639       <div class="title">
11640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
11641       </div>
11642       <div class="date">
11643         28th April 2009
11644       </div>
11645       <div class="body">
11646         <p>Julien Blache
11647 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
11648 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
11649 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11650 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11651 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11652 properties.</p>
11653
11654       </div>
11655       <div class="tags">
11656
11657
11658         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11659
11660
11661       </div>
11662     </div>
11663     <div class="padding"></div>
11664
11665     <div class="entry">
11666       <div class="title">
11667         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
11668       </div>
11669       <div class="date">
11670          5th April 2009
11671       </div>
11672       <div class="body">
11673         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
11674 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
11675 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
11676 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
11677 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
11678 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
11679 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
11680 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
11681
11682 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
11683 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
11684 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
11685   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11686   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
11687
11688 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
11689 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
11690 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
11691 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
11692
11693 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
11694 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
11695 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
11696 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
11697
11698 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
11699 set -e
11700 URL="$1"
11701 SAVEFILE="$2"
11702 DURATION="$3"
11703 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
11704   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11705   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
11706 pid=$!
11707 sleep $DURATION
11708 kill $pid
11709 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
11710
11711       </div>
11712       <div class="tags">
11713
11714
11715         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11716
11717
11718       </div>
11719     </div>
11720     <div class="padding"></div>
11721
11722     <div class="entry">
11723       <div class="title">
11724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
11725       </div>
11726       <div class="date">
11727         30th March 2009
11728       </div>
11729       <div class="body">
11730         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11731 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11732 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11733 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11734 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11735 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11736 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11737 application.</p>
11738
11739 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11740 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11741 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11742 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11743 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11744 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11745 blocked from doing so.</p>
11746
11747 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11748 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11749 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11750 requirements change.</p>
11751
11752 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11753 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11754 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
11755
11756       </div>
11757       <div class="tags">
11758
11759
11760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11761
11762
11763       </div>
11764     </div>
11765     <div class="padding"></div>
11766
11767     <div class="entry">
11768       <div class="title">
11769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="date">
11772         29th March 2009
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="body">
11775         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11776 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11777 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11778 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11779 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11780 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11781 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11782 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11783 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11784 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11785 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11786 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11787 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11788 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11789 now. :)</p>
11790
11791       </div>
11792       <div class="tags">
11793
11794
11795         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11796
11797
11798       </div>
11799     </div>
11800     <div class="padding"></div>
11801
11802     <div class="entry">
11803       <div class="title">
11804         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
11805       </div>
11806       <div class="date">
11807         29th March 2009
11808       </div>
11809       <div class="body">
11810         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11811 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11812 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11813 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11814 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11815 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
11816
11817 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
11818 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11819 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11820 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11821 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11822 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11823 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11824 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11825 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11826 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11827 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11828 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11829 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
11830
11831 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11832 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11833 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11834 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
11835
11836 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11837 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
11838
11839 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11840 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11841 new IETF work group?</p>
11842
11843       </div>
11844       <div class="tags">
11845
11846
11847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11848
11849
11850       </div>
11851     </div>
11852     <div class="padding"></div>
11853
11854     <div class="entry">
11855       <div class="title">
11856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
11857       </div>
11858       <div class="date">
11859         28th February 2009
11860       </div>
11861       <div class="body">
11862         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
11863 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
11864 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
11865 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
11866 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
11867 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
11868 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
11869 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
11870 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
11871 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
11872 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
11873 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
11874 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
11875 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
11876 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
11877 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
11878 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
11879 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
11880 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
11881 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
11882 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
11883 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
11884 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
11885 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
11886 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
11887 machine.</p>
11888
11889 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
11890 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
11891 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
11892 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
11893 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
11894 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
11895 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
11896
11897 <pre>
11898 use LWP::Simple;
11899 use POSIX;
11900 use WWW::Mechanize;
11901 use Date::Parse;
11902 [...]
11903 sub get_support_info {
11904     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
11905     my $str;
11906
11907     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
11908         # fetch website from Dell support
11909         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
11910         my $webpage = get($url);
11911         return undef unless ($webpage);
11912
11913         my $daysleft = -1;
11914         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
11915         foreach my $line (@lines) {
11916             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
11917             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11918             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
11919
11920             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
11921             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
11922             my $lastend = "";
11923             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
11924                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
11925
11926                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11927                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11928                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11929                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
11930                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
11931                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
11932                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
11933             }
11934             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11935             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11936                 if ($lastend lt $today);
11937         }
11938     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
11939         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
11940         my $url =
11941             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
11942         $mech->get($url);
11943         my $fields = {
11944             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
11945             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
11946             'country' => 'NO',
11947             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
11948             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
11949         };
11950         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
11951                             fields      => $fields );
11952         # Next step is screen scraping
11953         my $content = $mech->content();
11954
11955         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11956         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11957         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11958         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11959
11960         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11961
11962         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
11963             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
11964                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
11965             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
11966             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11967                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11968             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11969                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
11970
11971             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
11972
11973             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11974                 if ($end lt $today);
11975         }
11976     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
11977         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
11978         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
11979         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
11980             my $content =
11981                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
11982             if ($content) {
11983                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11984                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11985                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11986                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11987
11988                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
11989                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
11990
11991                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
11992
11993                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11994                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11995                     if ($end lt $today);
11996             }
11997         }
11998     }
11999     return $str;
12000 }
12001 </pre>
12002
12003 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
12004 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
12005 from dmidecode.</p>
12006
12007 <pre>
12008 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
12009                        "447707-B21");
12010 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
12011 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
12012                        "1234567");
12013 </pre>
12014
12015 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
12016 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
12017
12018 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
12019 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
12020 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
12021 do so.</p>
12022
12023       </div>
12024       <div class="tags">
12025
12026
12027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12028
12029
12030       </div>
12031     </div>
12032     <div class="padding"></div>
12033
12034     <div class="entry">
12035       <div class="title">
12036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
12037       </div>
12038       <div class="date">
12039         20th February 2009
12040       </div>
12041       <div class="body">
12042         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
12043 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
12044 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
12045 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
12046 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
12047 the "missing" computer.</p>
12048
12049 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
12050 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
12051 code blocks as defined in the
12052 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
12053 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
12054 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
12055 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
12056 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
12057 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
12058 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
12059 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
12060 codes.</p>
12061
12062 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
12063 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
12064 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
12065 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
12066 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
12067 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
12068
12069 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
12070 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
12071 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
12072 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
12073 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
12074 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
12075 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
12076 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
12077 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
12078 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
12079
12080 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
12081 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
12082 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
12083
12084       </div>
12085       <div class="tags">
12086
12087
12088         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12089
12090
12091       </div>
12092     </div>
12093     <div class="padding"></div>
12094
12095     <div class="entry">
12096       <div class="title">
12097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
12098       </div>
12099       <div class="date">
12100         17th January 2009
12101       </div>
12102       <div class="body">
12103         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
12104 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
12105 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
12106 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
12107 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
12108 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
12109 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
12110 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
12111 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
12112 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
12113 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
12114 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
12115 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
12116 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
12117
12118 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
12119 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
12120 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
12121 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
12122 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
12123 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
12124 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
12125 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
12126 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
12127 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
12128 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
12129 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
12130 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
12131 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
12132 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
12133 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
12134 playing when the download is done.</p>
12135
12136 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
12137 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
12138 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
12139 too.</p>
12140
12141 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
12142 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
12143 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
12144 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
12145
12146       </div>
12147       <div class="tags">
12148
12149
12150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12151
12152
12153       </div>
12154     </div>
12155     <div class="padding"></div>
12156
12157     <div class="entry">
12158       <div class="title">
12159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
12160       </div>
12161       <div class="date">
12162         28th December 2008
12163       </div>
12164       <div class="body">
12165         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
12166 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
12167 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
12168 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
12169 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
12170 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
12171 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
12172 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
12173 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
12174 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
12175 source, sink and mixer applications and
12176 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
12177 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
12178 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
12179 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
12180 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
12181 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
12182 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
12183 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
12184 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
12185
12186 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
12187 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
12188 larger stick as well.</p>
12189
12190       </div>
12191       <div class="tags">
12192
12193
12194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12195
12196
12197       </div>
12198     </div>
12199     <div class="padding"></div>
12200
12201     <div class="entry">
12202       <div class="title">
12203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
12204       </div>
12205       <div class="date">
12206          7th December 2008
12207       </div>
12208       <div class="body">
12209         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
12210 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
12211 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
12212 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
12213 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
12214 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
12215 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
12216 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
12217
12218 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
12219 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
12220 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
12221 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
12222 of these cards.</p>
12223
12224       </div>
12225       <div class="tags">
12226
12227
12228         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
12229
12230
12231       </div>
12232     </div>
12233     <div class="padding"></div>
12234
12235     <div class="entry">
12236       <div class="title">
12237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
12238       </div>
12239       <div class="date">
12240         25th November 2008
12241       </div>
12242       <div class="body">
12243         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
12244 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
12245 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
12246 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
12247 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
12248 notes are available on
12249 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
12250 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
12251 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
12252 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
12253 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
12254 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
12255 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
12256 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
12257 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
12258
12259 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
12260 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
12261
12262       </div>
12263       <div class="tags">
12264
12265
12266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12267
12268
12269       </div>
12270     </div>
12271     <div class="padding"></div>
12272
12273     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
12274     <div id="sidebar">
12275
12276
12277
12278 <h2>Archive</h2>
12279 <ul>
12280
12281 <li>2012
12282 <ul>
12283
12284 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
12285
12286 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
12287
12288 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
12289
12290 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
12291
12292 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
12293
12294 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
12295
12296 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
12297
12298 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
12299
12300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
12301
12302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
12303
12304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
12305
12306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (2)</a></li>
12307
12308 </ul></li>
12309
12310 <li>2011
12311 <ul>
12312
12313 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
12314
12315 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
12316
12317 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
12318
12319 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
12320
12321 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
12322
12323 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
12324
12325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
12326
12327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
12328
12329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
12330
12331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
12332
12333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
12334
12335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
12336
12337 </ul></li>
12338
12339 <li>2010
12340 <ul>
12341
12342 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
12343
12344 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
12345
12346 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
12347
12348 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
12349
12350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
12351
12352 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
12353
12354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
12355
12356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
12357
12358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
12359
12360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
12361
12362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
12363
12364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
12365
12366 </ul></li>
12367
12368 <li>2009
12369 <ul>
12370
12371 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
12372
12373 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
12374
12375 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
12376
12377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
12378
12379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
12380
12381 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
12382
12383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
12384
12385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
12386
12387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
12388
12389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
12390
12391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
12392
12393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
12394
12395 </ul></li>
12396
12397 <li>2008
12398 <ul>
12399
12400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
12401
12402 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
12403
12404 </ul></li>
12405
12406 </ul>
12407
12408
12409
12410 <h2>Tags</h2>
12411 <ul>
12412
12413  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
12414
12415  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
12416
12417  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
12418
12419  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (3)</a></li>
12420
12421  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (3)</a></li>
12422
12423  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
12424
12425  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
12426
12427  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (57)</a></li>
12428
12429  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (116)</a></li>
12430
12431  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
12432
12433  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
12434
12435  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
12436
12437  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (161)</a></li>
12438
12439  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
12440
12441  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
12442
12443  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (9)</a></li>
12444
12445  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
12446
12447  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
12448
12449  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
12450
12451  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
12452
12453  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (5)</a></li>
12454
12455  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
12456
12457  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
12458
12459  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (217)</a></li>
12460
12461  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (147)</a></li>
12462
12463  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
12464
12465  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
12466
12467  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (39)</a></li>
12468
12469  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (60)</a></li>
12470
12471  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
12472
12473  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
12474
12475  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
12476
12477  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
12478
12479  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
12480
12481  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
12482
12483  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
12484
12485  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
12486
12487  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
12488
12489  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
12490
12491  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
12492
12493  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
12494
12495  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
12496
12497  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
12498
12499  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
12500
12501  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
12502
12503  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
12504
12505  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
12506
12507  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
12508
12509 </ul>
12510
12511
12512     </div>
12513     <p style="text-align: right">
12514  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
12515 </p>
12516
12517   </body>
12518 </html>