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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...
</a>
31 <p><a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
32 melder i dag
</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
33 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
34 like. Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
35 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
36 <a href=
"https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium
</a> ville gjort en bedre
37 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet. Det kan se slik ut.
</p>
39 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:
</p>
42 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
43 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
44 for eksempel flykningekrisen.
</p>
46 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
49 <li>Flykningeregnskapet
2016, UNHCR og IDMC
50 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet,
26. november
2015
55 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:
</p>
58 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
59 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
60 til dømes *flykningekrisen.
</p>
62 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
66 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet
2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC
</li>
67 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet,
26. november
2015</li>
72 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
73 ekstra språksjekk. Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
74 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen. Jeg mistenker dog at
75 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
76 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
77 det er kanskje flisespikking. Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
78 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.
</p>
84 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
89 <div class=
"padding"></div>
93 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...
</a>
99 <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
100 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
101 was experiencing NFS hang. If you try to use
<tt>df
</tt> or look at a
102 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
103 shell) will hang too. So you want to be able to detect this without
104 risking the detection process getting stuck too. It has not been
105 obvious how to do this. When the hang has lasted a while, it is
106 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:
</p>
109 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
110 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
113 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
114 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work. If there are lots of other
115 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
118 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
119 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
120 it. The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
121 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg. And after digging a
122 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
123 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.
</p>
125 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
126 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
127 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
128 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
129 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
130 view), but that does not worry me.
</p>
132 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:
</p>
136 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
137 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=
1.1
138 opts: rw,vers=
3,rsize=
65536,wsize=
65536,namlen=
255,acregmin=
3,acregmax=
60,acdirmin=
30,acdirmax=
60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=
600,retrans=
2,sec=sys,mountaddr=
129.240.3.145,mountvers=
3,mountport=
4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
140 caps: caps=
0x3fe7,wtmult=
4096,dtsize=
8192,bsize=
0,namlen=
255
141 sec: flavor=
1,pseudoflavor=
1
142 events:
61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
143 bytes:
166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
144 RPC iostats version:
1.0 p/v:
100003/
3 (nfs)
145 xprt: tcp
925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
147 NULL:
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
148 GETATTR:
61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
149 SETATTR:
463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
150 LOOKUP:
17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
151 ACCESS:
14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
152 READLINK:
125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
153 READ:
4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
154 WRITE:
8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
155 CREATE:
171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
156 MKDIR:
3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
157 SYMLINK:
903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
158 MKNOD:
80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
159 REMOVE:
429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
160 RMDIR:
3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
161 RENAME:
466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
162 LINK:
289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
163 READDIR:
2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
164 READDIRPLUS:
1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
165 FSSTAT:
6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
166 FSINFO:
2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
167 PATHCONF:
1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
168 COMMIT:
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
170 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
172 </pre></blockquote></p>
174 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
175 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
176 operation. Here
22 write timeouts and
5 access timeouts. If these
177 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
178 hang. Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
179 away. The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
180 while. The exact timeout value depend on the setup. For example the
181 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
182 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
185 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
186 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
188 <ahref=
"http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
189 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services
</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
190 command can be used to get these timeout values. But this do not work
191 on Linux, as far as I can tell. I
192 <ahref=
"http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this
</a>,
193 but have not seen any replies yet.
</p>
195 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
196 experiencing NFS hangs? Is there a way to detect which processes are
197 affected? Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
198 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared? I would very
199 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.
</p>
205 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/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
210 <div class=
"padding"></div>
214 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress
</a>
220 <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
221 Bokmål edition of
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
222 Administrator's Handbook
</a>. Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
223 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
224 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
225 use of correct computer science terms. The plan is to make the book
226 available on paper, as well as in electronic form. For that to
227 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
228 to be translated. If you want to help out, get in touch.
</p>
230 <p><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
232 fresh PDF edition
</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
233 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
234 proofreading. If you find any errors, please
235 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
236 Weblate and correct the error
</a>. The
237 <a href=
"http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
238 of the translation including figures
</a> is a useful source for those
239 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.
</p>
245 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
250 <div class=
"padding"></div>
254 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?
</a>
260 <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
261 <a href=
"http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey
</a>, a small
262 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
263 Packard. Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
264 work great! According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
265 box, you need the Linux kernel version
4.1 or later. I tested on a
266 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version
4.9), and there it worked just
267 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly. I wrote a small
268 test oneliner to test. It first print the current entropy level,
269 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
270 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:
</p>
273 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
274 dd bs=
1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=
1; \
275 for n in $(seq
1 5); do \
276 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
282 28 byte kopiert,
0,
000264565 s,
106 kB/s
291 <p>The entropy level increases by
3-
4 every second. In such case any
292 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
293 will halt and wait for more entrpy. And here is the situation with
294 the ChaosKey inserted:
</p>
297 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
298 dd bs=
1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=
1; \
299 for n in $(seq
1 5); do \
300 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
306 104 byte kopiert,
0,
000487647 s,
213 kB/s
315 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
316 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)
</p>
318 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year. You might
319 find
<a href=
"https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
320 recording illuminating
</a>. It explains exactly what the source of
321 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
322 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
329 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>.
334 <div class=
"padding"></div>
338 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go?
— geolocated IP traceroute
</a>
344 <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
345 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
346 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
347 is hard to find all the details. Many years ago, I wrote a system to
348 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
349 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
350 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users. Back
351 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
352 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
353 graph and the map. The output from traceroute typically look like
357 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (
85.88.67.10),
30 hops max,
60 byte packets
358 1 uio-gw10.uio.no (
129.240.202.1)
0.447 ms
0.486 ms
0.621 ms
359 2 uio-gw8.uio.no (
129.240.24.229)
0.467 ms
0.578 ms
0.675 ms
360 3 oslo-gw1.uninett.no (
128.39.65.17)
0.385 ms
0.373 ms
0.358 ms
361 4 te3-
1-
2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (
193.156.90.3)
1.174 ms
1.172 ms
1.153 ms
362 5 he16-
1-
1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (
195.0.244.234)
2.627 ms he16-
1-
1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (
195.0.244.48)
3.172 ms he16-
1-
1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (
195.0.244.234)
2.857 ms
363 6 ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (
195.0.242.39)
0.662 ms
0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (
195.0.242.23)
0.622 ms
364 7 89.191.10.146 (
89.191.10.146)
0.931 ms
0.917 ms
0.955 ms
370 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
371 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
372 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
373 package to reach the equipment and return to me. Three packages are
374 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path. This
375 is shown for hop
5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
376 traceroute request.
</p>
378 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes. Other good traceroute
379 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
380 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
381 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities). All of them are easily
382 available in
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>.
</p>
384 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
385 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
386 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe. The
387 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
388 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
389 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content. This will
390 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
391 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
392 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).
</p>
394 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
395 www.stortinget.no. It is read daily by all members of parliament and
396 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
397 citizens of Norway. A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
398 ask your browser to contact
8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
399 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
400 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
401 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se. I extracted this by
402 asking
<a href=
"http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS
</a> to visit the
403 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
404 render the page (in HAR format using
405 <a href=
"https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
406 netsniff example
</a>. I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
407 to do this). My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
408 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
409 information is spread when visiting the page.
</p>
411 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
412 src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt=
"map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
414 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
415 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
416 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP. KML
417 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
418 of the GIS tools I have available. I got good help from by NUUG
419 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
420 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
421 kmltraceroute git repository
</a>. Unfortunately, the quality of the
422 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
423 friends had access to) is not up to the task. The IP addresses of
424 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
425 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
426 located, as you can see from
<a href=
"www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
427 KML file I created
</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
429 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
430 src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt=
"scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
432 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
433 <a href=
"http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project
</a>,
434 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
436 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
437 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
438 format
</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
439 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation. This graph
440 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
441 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
442 3 Communications and NetDNA.
</p>
444 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
445 src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt=
"example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
447 <p>In the process, I came across the
448 <a href=
"https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute
</a> by
449 Salim Gasmi. Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
450 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
451 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
452 geolocation. But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
453 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
454 for postprocessing. So I contacted the developer and asked if he
455 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
456 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
457 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway. So
458 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
459 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
460 <a href=
"https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation
</a>, and get the
461 trace in KML format for further processing.
</p>
463 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
464 src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt=
"map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
466 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
467 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland. Plenty of places where the
468 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
469 without your best interest as their top priority.
</p>
471 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
472 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
473 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
474 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
475 behind the DNS name is traced this time. To get them all, one would
476 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
477 GeoTraceroute). That might be the next step in this project.
</p>
479 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
480 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
481 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
482 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
483 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe. (Hm, what should
484 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
485 unencrypted over the Internet.
</p>
487 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
488 <a href=
"http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
489 Rublev
<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
490 Marble. There are heaps of other options too.
</p>
492 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
493 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
494 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
500 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/kart">kart
</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/stortinget">stortinget
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
505 <div class=
"padding"></div>
509 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!
</a>
515 <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today. As my regular
516 readers probably know, I have been working on the
517 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
518 system
</a> for many years. The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
519 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
520 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
521 to map hardware to packages. Isenkram have its own mapping database,
522 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
523 metadata format. And today,
524 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream
</a> in
525 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
526 ie using fnmatch():
</p>
529 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
530 usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
531 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
533 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
535 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
536 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
538 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
541 Identifier: t2n [generic]
543 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
546 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
548 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
551 Identifier: nbc [generic]
553 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
558 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
559 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:
</p>
562 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
564 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
572 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
573 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)
</tt>.
575 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
576 make the most of the hardware they have, please
577 help
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
578 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines
</a>
579 documented in the wiki. So far only
11 packages provide such
580 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
581 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain
101 packages,
582 mostly related to USB dongles. Most of the packages with hardware
583 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
584 part of my involvement in
585 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
586 team
</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
587 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware. The
588 team also got a nice Christmas present today. The
589 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
590 package
</a> made it into Debian. With this package in place, it is
591 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
592 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
593 binaries for the NXT brick.
</p>
595 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
596 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
597 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
603 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
608 <div class=
"padding"></div>
612 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings
</a>
618 <p><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
619 system
</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
620 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
621 going strong. It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
622 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
623 packages. It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
624 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package. The latter will
625 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
626 install to get the dongle working. It will even provide a button to
627 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.
</p>
629 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:
</p>
650 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
651 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
652 I have all the firmware my machine need:
655 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
656 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
660 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around
250
661 packages in Debian with udev rules. These seem like good candidates
662 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
663 several that should be proposed by isenkram. I have not had time to
664 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are
97
665 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.
11 of these
666 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
667 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.
</p>
669 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment. The
670 <strong>marked packages
</strong> are also announcing their hardware
671 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:
</p>
673 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
674 <strong>array-info
</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
675 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware,
<strong>brltty
</strong>,
676 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms
</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
677 <strong>colorhug-client
</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
678 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
679 fprintd-demo,
<strong>galileo
</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
680 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
681 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
682 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
683 <strong>libnxt
</strong>, libpam-fprintd,
<strong>lomoco
</strong>,
684 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
685 <strong>nbc
</strong>,
<strong>nqc
</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
686 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
687 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
688 <strong>pymissile
</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
689 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
690 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
691 <strong>t2n
</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
692 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
693 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
694 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
695 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
698 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
699 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
701 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
702 metadata according to the guidelines
</a> to provide the information
703 for everyone. In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
704 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.
</p>
706 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
707 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
708 card. See
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #
838735</a> for
709 the details. I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon. In
710 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.
</p>
716 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
721 <div class=
"padding"></div>
725 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software
</a>
731 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
733 <p>In my early years, I played
734 <a href=
"http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
735 Elite
</a> on my PC. I spent many months trading and fighting in
736 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on. The
737 original Elite game was available on Commodore
64 and the IBM PC
738 edition I played had a
64 KB executable. I am still impressed today
739 that the authors managed to squeeze both a
3D engine and details about
740 more than
2000 planet systems across
7 galaxies into a binary so
743 <p>I have known about
<a href=
"http://www.oolite.org/">the free
744 software game Oolite inspired by Elite
</a> for a while, but did not
745 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago. It was
746 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
747 still valid. But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
748 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station. And I am still not
749 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
750 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
751 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)
</p>
753 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
754 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
755 planets to be able to decide where to trade what. This time I had the
757 <a href=
"http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki
</a>,
758 where information about each planet is easily available with common
759 price ranges and suggested trading routes. This improved my ability
760 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
761 useful equipent in a few days. I believe I originally played for
762 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
763 after less then a week.
</p>
765 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
766 space, you should try out Oolite. It is available for Linux, MacOSX
767 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since
2011.
</p>
769 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
770 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
771 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
777 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/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
782 <div class=
"padding"></div>
786 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata
</a>
792 <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
793 installation system, observing how using
794 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
795 could speed up the installation
</a> quite a bit. My testing measured
796 speedup around
20-
40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
797 1000 packages from within the installer. The eatmydata package
798 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing. This is a bit
799 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
800 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
801 machine crashes at an inconvenient time. But for an installation, if
802 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
803 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
804 up the process make perfect sense.
806 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
807 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata
</a>,
808 but did not have time to push it any further. But a few months ago I
809 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
810 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
811 speedup in Debian. Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
812 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
813 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
814 quicker installations. It can be enabled using preseeding. The
815 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:
</p>
818 preseed/
early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
821 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
822 environment early in the installation sequence. Having it installed
823 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
824 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
825 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata. This is enough to
826 speed up the installation process. There is a proposal to
827 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
828 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf
</a>, but I have not
829 tested its impact.
</p>
836 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>.
841 <div class=
"padding"></div>
845 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium
</a>
851 <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
852 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
853 der det er krav om skriftspråk. I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
854 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år. Det mange ikke
855 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
856 <a href=
"https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate
</a> og
857 <a href=
"https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator
</a> ikke kan
858 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
859 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan. Oversetterverktøyet
860 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
861 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
862 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
863 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
864 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt. Av og til
865 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer. Jeg vet
866 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
867 Apertium. Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for? Besøk i så fall
868 <a href=
"https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org
</a> og fyll inn
869 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
871 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
872 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
873 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob
</a>
874 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
876 <a href=
"http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen
</a>
877 for detaljer om web-API-et. Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
878 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
883 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
884 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
885 det er krav om skriftspråk. I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
886 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år. Det mange ikkje
887 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
888 <a href=
"https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate
</a> og
889 <a href=
"https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator
</a> ikkje
890 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
891 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan. Omsetjarverktøyet
892 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
893 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
894 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
895 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
896 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt. Av og
897 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar. Eg veit
898 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
899 *Apertium. Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for? Besøk i så
900 fall
<a href=
"https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org
</a> og fyll inn
901 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
903 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
904 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
905 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob
</a>
906 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
907 *api.*apertium.org. Sjå
908 <a href=
"http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen
</a>
909 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit. Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
910 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
917 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
922 <div class=
"padding"></div>
926 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian
</a>
932 <p><a href=
"http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler
</a>, a nice
933 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
934 multi-threaded program, finally
935 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
936 Debian unstable yesterday
</A>. Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
938 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
939 blogged about the coz tool
</a> in August working with upstream to make
940 it suitable for Debian. There are still issues with clang
941 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
942 JavaScript libraries.
</p>
944 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:
</p>
947 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info
</tt>
950 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
951 directory with the profiling information. This is then given to a
952 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
953 <a href=
"http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page
</a>.
954 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:
</p>
957 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm
</tt>
960 <p>See the project home page and the
961 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
962 ;login: article on Coz
</a> for more information on how it is
969 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>.
974 <div class=
"padding"></div>
978 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway
</a>
984 <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
985 <a href=
"mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms
</a> controller as a birthday
986 present. It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
987 build a Segway like balancing lego robot. I had already built
988 <a href=
"http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
989 robot
</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
990 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well. It
991 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
992 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
993 would fall over after a short while. I wanted something more robust,
995 <a href=
"https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
996 gyro sensor from HiTechnic
</a> I believed would solve it on my
997 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
1000 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
1001 since then. But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
1002 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
1004 <a href=
"http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
1005 HTWay
</a>, a segway like balancing robot. Build instructions and
1006 <a href=
"https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
1007 code
</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
1008 together. And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
1009 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
1010 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour. The resulting robot
1011 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:
</p>
1013 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
1015 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
1016 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
1017 (taskControl). I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
1018 working without that sensor present. Now it balances just fine until
1019 the battery status run low:
</p>
1021 <p align=
"center"><video width=
"70%" controls=
"true">
1022 <source src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type=
"video/ogg">
1025 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
1026 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.
</p>
1028 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
1029 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
1030 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
1031 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
1032 project page
</a> and join the Debian LEGO team. Personally I own a
1033 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
1034 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
1041 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
1046 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1050 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone
</a>
1057 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
1058 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working
</a> without
1059 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone). It is
1060 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.
</p>
1062 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
1063 it regularly to chat with my loved ones. I had a major snag at the
1064 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
1065 setup, identity and keys. The reason behind this major mess was
1066 running out of disk space. To avoid that ever happening again I have
1067 started storing everything in
<tt>userdata/
</tt> in git, to be able to
1068 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake. I
1069 had to use it once after introducing the git backup. When rolling
1070 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
1071 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
1072 problem. I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
1073 protocol to detect rollback attacks. The git repository is rather big
1074 (
674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
1075 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
1078 <p>I've also hit the
90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
1079 make it impossible to send messages using Signal. I could still
1080 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
1081 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
1082 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
1083 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
1084 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.
</p>
1086 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
1087 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly. Below is an updated
1088 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal. The
1089 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
1090 and call a function from there. I got help from a friend with more
1091 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
1092 button instead. This mean that to get started you just need to run
1093 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
1094 now. I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to
90 days
1095 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.
</p>
1097 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:
</p>
1101 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
1102 browser you need. Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
1103 know, so you need to install it.
1106 apt install git tor chromium
1107 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1110 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
1113 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
1114 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app
</tt>).
1116 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
1117 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
1118 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
1119 'Register'. Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
1120 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.
</li>
1122 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others. Note, new contacts do
1123 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
1124 no way to assign names to Contacts. There is also no way to create or
1125 update chat groups. I suspect this is because the web app do not have
1126 a associated contact database.
</li>
1130 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
1131 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
1132 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
1133 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon). See for
1135 <a href=
"https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
1136 LibreSignal issue tracker
</a> for a thread documenting the authors
1137 view on these issues. But the network effect is strong in this case,
1138 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
1139 Signal. Perhaps we can all move to
<a href=
"https://ring.cx/">Ring
</a>
1140 once it
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
1141 laptop
</a>? It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
1142 in
<a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian
</a> and
1143 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu
</a>, but not
1144 working on Debian Stable.
</p>
1146 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
1147 working. It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
1148 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:
</p>
1151 cd Signal-Desktop; cat
<<EOF | patch -p1
1152 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
1153 index
24b4c1d.
.579345f
100644
1154 --- a/js/background.js
1155 +++ b/js/background.js
1160 - var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1161 + var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
1162 var SERVER_PORTS = [
80,
4433,
8443];
1163 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1164 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1165 var messageReceiver;
1166 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1167 if (messageReceiver) {
1168 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
1169 index
639aeae..beb91c3
100644
1175 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
0;
1176 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (
90 *
24 *
60 *
60 *
1000);
1178 window.extension = window.extension || {};
1180 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
1181 index
7816f4f.
.1d6233b
100644
1182 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
1183 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
1186 'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this,
1),
1187 'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this,
2),
1188 - 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this,
3)
1189 + 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this,
3),
1190 + 'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
1193 clearQR: function() {
1194 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
1195 index dc0f28e.
.8d709f6
100644
1199 <div class='nav'
>
1200 <h1
>{{ installWelcome }}
</h1
>
1201 <p
>{{ installTagline }}
</p
>
1202 -
<div
> <a class='button step2'
>{{ installGetStartedButton }}
</a
> </div
>
1203 +
<div
> <a class='button step2'
>{{ installGetStartedButton }}
</a
>
1204 +
<br
> <a
class="button callreg"
>Register without mobile phone
</a
>
1207 <span class='dot step1 selected'
></span
>
1208 <span class='dot step2'
></span
>
1209 <span class='dot step3'
></span
>
1210 --- /dev/null
2016-
10-
07 09:
55:
13.730181472 +
0200
1211 +++ b/run-signal-app
2016-
10-
10 08:
54:
09.434172391 +
0200
1217 +
userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
1218 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
1219 + (cd $userdata && git init)
1221 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
1223 +
--proxy-server="socks://localhost:
9050" \
1224 + --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
1226 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
1229 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1230 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1231 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1237 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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
1242 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1246 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier
</a>
1252 <p><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
1253 system
</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
1254 packages support the hardware in a given machine. The command line
1255 tool
<tt>isenkram-lookup
</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
1256 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
1257 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
1258 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
1259 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
1260 while using the computer. For example, if you plug in a smart card
1261 reader, the system will ask if you want to install
<tt>pcscd
</tt> if
1262 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
1263 camera the system will ask if you want to install
<tt>cheese
</tt> if
1264 cheese is currently missing. This already work just fine.
</p>
1266 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
1267 package names. When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
1268 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
1269 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
1270 http. This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
1271 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.
</p>
1273 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings. The modalias
1274 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
1275 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
1276 globbing. It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
1279 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
1280 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
1281 isenkram propose obsolete packages too. But along came AppStream, a
1282 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
1283 software packages. When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
1284 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
1285 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
1286 mapping hardware to packages. This idea was accepted and AppStream is
1287 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
1288 distribution neutral way. I wrote
1289 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
1290 recipe on how to add such meta-information
</a> in a blog post last
1291 December. If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
1292 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.
</p>
1294 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
1295 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream. The effect is
1296 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
1297 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
1298 it working. The intention is that this should allow the local user to
1299 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
1300 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.
</p>
1302 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
1303 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
1304 annoying. The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
1305 the USB device for programming the unit. This used to work, but no
1306 longer in Jessie and Stretch. After some investigation and asking
1307 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
1308 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices. The
1309 ConsoleKit mechanism from
<tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/
70-udev-acl.rules
</tt>
1310 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
1311 plugdev group during login. Michael Biebl told me that this method
1312 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead. This was good
1313 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
1314 directory like LDAP. Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
1315 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
1316 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
1317 setup. Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
1318 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.
</p>
1320 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'. It can either be
1321 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
1322 /lib/udev/rules.d/
70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices. As the
1323 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
1324 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages. Here
1325 is one example. For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
1326 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/
60-nqc.rules
</tt> file now look like this:
1329 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="
0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="
0001", \
1330 SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
1333 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end. I suspect all
1334 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
1335 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
1336 <tt>70-uaccess.rules
</tt>). Perhaps a lintian check should be created
1339 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
1340 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
1341 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
1342 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/
70-udev-acl.rules
</tt>. If it is, I guess the
1343 indirect method is the preferred way. Michael
1344 <a href=
"https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
1345 documentation from the systemd project
</a> and I hope it will make
1346 this clearer. For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
1347 is already handled by
<tt>70-uaccess.rules
</tt>, and add the tag
1348 directly if no such class exist.
</p>
1350 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
1351 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
1352 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a>.
</p>
1354 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
1355 please join us on our IRC channel
1356 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> and join
1357 the
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
1358 LEGO team
</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing
1359 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)
</p>
1361 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1362 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1363 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1369 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
1374 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1378 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public
</a>
1385 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
1386 to work
</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
1387 how to set up and administrate a Debian system. Today I am happy to
1388 report that the first draft is now publicly available. You can find
1389 it on
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
1390 Administrator's Handbook page
</a> (under Other languages). The first
1391 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
1392 proofreading the content. If you want to help out, please start
1394 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1395 hosted weblate project page
</a>, and get in touch using
1396 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1397 translators mailing list
</a>. Please also check out
1398 <a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1399 contributors
</a>. A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
1400 and update weblate if you find errors.
</p>
1402 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
1403 electronic form.
</p>
1409 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1414 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1418 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software
</a>
1424 <p>This summer, I read a great article
1425 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
1426 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For
</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
1427 how to profile multi-threaded programs. It presented a system for
1428 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
1429 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up
" parts of
1430 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run. It does this by
1431 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up
" code is running
1432 and measure how this affect processing time. The processing time is
1433 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
1434 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END). It
1435 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
1436 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
1438 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
1439 get the system into Debian. I
1440 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
830708">created
1441 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
1442 system ready for Debian by sending patches. The build process need to
1443 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
1444 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
1445 profiling information included in the source package.
1446 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
1448 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple. To run an coz experiment
1449 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
1451 <p><blockquote><pre>
1452 coz run --- program-to-run
1453 </pre></blockquote></p>
1455 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
1456 information. To show what part of the code affect the performance
1457 most, use a web browser and either point it to
1458 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/
">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
1459 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch). Check out this web
1460 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like. To make the
1461 profiling more useful you include <coz.h> and insert the
1462 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
1463 code, rebuild and run the profiler. This allow coz to do more
1464 targeted experiments.</p>
1466 <p>A video published by ACM
1467 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg
">presenting the
1468 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube. There is also a paper
1469 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
1471 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger
">Coz:
1472 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
1474 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz
">The source code</a>
1475 for Coz is available from github. It will only build with clang
1477 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=
55606">C++
1478 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
1479 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/
67">a patch to solve
1480 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
1482 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
1483 of software in Debian. I would very much like some help with the
1484 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
1491 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/nice free software
">nice free software</a>.
1496 <div class="padding
"></div>
1500 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html
">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
1506 <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
1507 to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
1508 again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
1509 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy
">an
1510 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
1511 device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken
1512 microphone The initial idea had been to just
1513 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace
">install
1514 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
1515 until a few days ago.</p>
1517 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
1518 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
1519 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
1520 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
1521 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
1522 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/
">HTC developer web
1523 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
1525 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
1526 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027. This
1527 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
1528 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
1529 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not. So I had to
1530 come up with a different approach. I got a lot of help from AndyCap
1531 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
1534 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
1535 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00
.0029.exe
">the
1536 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
1537 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/
">a github
1538 project named unruu</a> using libunshield. The unshield tool did not
1539 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
1540 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
1541 devices it would work for.</p>
1543 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device. For this I
1544 followed some instructions
1545 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/
2013/
09/new-ruu-zips-posted/
">available
1546 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
1547 machine with Debian testing:</p>
1550 adb reboot-bootloader
1551 fastboot oem rebootRUU
1552 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
1553 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
1557 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
1558 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
1559 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
1560 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
1563 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
1564 instructions on the HTC developer web site. I got the device token
1568 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
1571 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
1575 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
1578 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
1579 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
1580 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
1581 before I start. We will see what happen next. Perhaps I should
1582 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/
">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
1588 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/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
1593 <div class="padding
"></div>
1597 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html
">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
1603 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
1604 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/
">the Signal app</a>, as it is
1605 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
1606 friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a
1607 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to
1608 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
1609 machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the
1610 Github source, compared it to the source in
1611 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US
">the
1612 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
1613 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
1614 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form. Here is
1615 the recipe how I did it.
</p>
1617 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
1620 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1623 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
1624 able to talk to other Signal users:
</p>
1627 cat
<<EOF | patch -p0
1628 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/background.js
1629 --- ./js/background.js
2016-
06-
29 13:
43:
15.630344628 +
0200
1630 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/background.js
2016-
06-
29 14:
06:
29.530300934 +
0200
1635 - var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1636 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1637 + var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:
4433';
1638 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1639 var messageReceiver;
1640 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1641 if (messageReceiver) {
1642 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
1643 --- ./js/expire.js
2016-
06-
29 13:
43:
15.630344628 +
0200
1644 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-
06-
29 14:
06:
29.530300934 +
0200
1648 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
0;
1649 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
1474492690000;
1651 window.extension = window.extension || {};
1656 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
1657 an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
1658 It is set
90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
1659 The value is seconds since
1970 times
1000, as far as I can tell.
</p>
1661 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
1662 script to launch Signal in Chromium.
</p>
1669 --proxy-server="socks://localhost:
9050" \
1670 --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
1673 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
1674 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
1675 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
1676 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
1677 connections if they use source IP address.
</p>
1679 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
1680 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
1681 repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
1682 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
1683 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
1684 registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and
1685 pressed 'Call'.
5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
1686 repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number
1687 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
1688 Signal from my laptop.
1690 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
1691 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
1692 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
1693 setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
1694 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
1695 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
1696 So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is
1697 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
1698 to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only
1699 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options
1700 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
1701 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.
</p>
1703 <p><strong>Update
2017-
01-
10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
1705 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
1706 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
1713 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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
1718 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1722 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?
</a>
1728 <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
1729 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
1730 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
1731 MIME types
</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
1732 the various players claimed support for. The range was from
55 to
130
1733 MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
1734 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
1735 their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
1736 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.
</p>
1738 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
1739 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
1740 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
1741 favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
1742 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
1743 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
1744 player MIME type support status
</a> Debian wiki page.
</p>
1746 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
1747 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
1748 kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
1749 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
1750 toten and parole.
</p>
1752 <p>A sad observation is that only
14 MIME types are listed as
1753 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
1754 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
1755 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
1756 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
1757 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
1758 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
1759 players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
1766 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>.
1771 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1775 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux
</a>
1781 <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
1782 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
1783 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I
1784 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
1785 the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to
1786 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
1787 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
1788 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and
1789 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
1790 present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be
1791 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the
1792 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
1793 be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides
1794 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
1795 shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem
–
1796 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
1797 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
1798 program to make slides. The point I'm trying to make is that we
1799 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
1800 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.
</p>
1802 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
1803 files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A
1804 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
1805 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
1806 browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand
1807 such file. I tracked down the cause being
<tt>file --mime-type
</tt>
1808 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
1809 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for
1810 <a href=
"http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
1811 behavour
</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked
1812 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
1813 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a
1814 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
1815 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.
</p>
1817 <p>But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music
1818 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
1819 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
1820 (*.rg). I've reported
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
1821 rosegarden problem to BTS
</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
1822 included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering
1823 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
1824 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.
</p>
1826 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
1827 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from
1828 <tt>file --mime-type
</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
1829 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME
1830 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
1831 information is collected from
1832 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
1833 desktop files
</a> available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is
1834 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
1835 activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one
1836 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
1837 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar. In general
1838 this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
1840 <a href=
"http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
1841 MIME type registered with IANA
</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
1842 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
1843 type in its list of supported MIME types.
</p>
1845 <p>The
<tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml
</tt> entry for
1846 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
1847 Shared MIME database
</a> look like this:
</p>
1849 <p><blockquote><pre>
1850 <?xml
version="
1.0"
encoding="UTF-
8"?
>
1851 <mime-info
xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"
>
1852 <mime-type
type="audio/x-rosegarden"
>
1853 <sub-class-of
type="application/x-gzip"/
>
1854 <comment
>Rosegarden project file
</comment
>
1855 <glob
pattern="*.rg"/
>
1858 </pre></blockquote></p>
1860 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
1861 (it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an
1862 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
1863 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.
</p>
1865 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
1866 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
1867 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:
</p>
1869 <p><blockquote><pre>
1870 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
1871 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
1872 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
1874 </pre></blockquote></p>
1876 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
1879 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
1880 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
1881 <tt>file --mime-type
</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
1882 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
1883 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
1884 support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it
1891 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>.
1896 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1900 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version
0.23 available in Debian unstable
</a>
1906 <p><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
1907 system
</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
1908 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
1909 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
1910 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
1911 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
1912 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
1913 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
1914 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
1915 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
1916 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
1917 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).
</p>
1919 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
1920 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
1921 is going away and is generally being replaced by
1922 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit
</a>,
1923 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
1924 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
1925 rewrite finally took place. I've just uploaded a new version of
1926 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
1927 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
1928 install the
<tt>isenkram
</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
1929 and see if it is recognised.
</p>
1931 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
1932 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
1933 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:
</p>
1935 <p><blockquote><pre>
1951 </pre></blockquote></p>
1953 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
1954 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
1955 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
1956 cross distribution appstream system
</a>.
1958 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
1959 blog posts about isenkram
</a> to learn how to do that.
</p>
1965 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
1970 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1974 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian
</a>
1980 <p>Yesterday I updated the
1981 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
1982 package in Debian
</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
1983 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
1984 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
1985 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
1986 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
1987 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
1988 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
1989 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
1990 graph window pop up as expected.
</p>
1992 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
1993 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
1994 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
1995 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
1998 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
2000 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
2001 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
2002 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
2003 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers
100 percent:
2005 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
2007 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to
80
2008 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
2011 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
2012 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
2013 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
2014 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
2015 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
2018 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2020 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
</a>
2021 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2022 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
<a
2023 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
2024 Patches are very welcome.
</p>
2026 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2027 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2028 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2034 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>.
2039 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2043 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included
</a>
2049 <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
2050 <a href=
"http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux
</a> finally entered
2051 Debian. The package status can be seen on
2052 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
2053 for zfs-linux
</a>. and
2054 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
2055 team status page
</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
2056 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
2057 source code
</a> is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
2058 great if you could help out with
2059 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package
</a>, as
2060 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.
</p>
2066 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>.
2071 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2075 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
</a>
2081 <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
2082 Debian claim support for most file formats.
</strong></p>
2084 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
2085 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
2086 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
2087 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
2088 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
2089 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
2090 result
</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
2091 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
2092 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
2095 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
2096 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
2097 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
2098 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
2099 desktop file
</a>. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
2100 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
2101 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
2102 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
2103 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
2104 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
2105 support most file formats.
</p>
2107 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
2108 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
2109 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
2110 in the table
</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
2111 listed first in the table.
</p>
2113 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
2114 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
2115 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
2122 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>.
2127 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2131 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled
</a>
2137 A friend of mine made me aware of
2138 <a href=
"https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra
</a>, a
2139 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
2140 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)
</p>
2142 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
2143 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a
5"
2144 LCD touch screen. The
6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
2145 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
2146 confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
2147 last I heard last night was that
22 more orders were needed before
2148 production started.
</p>
2150 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
2151 Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
2152 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?
</p>
2158 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>.
2163 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2167 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook
</a>
2173 <p>During this weekends
2174 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
2175 squashing party and developer gathering
</a>, we decided to do our part
2176 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
2177 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
2178 <a href=
"http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
2179 project
</a> to get started. If you want to help out, please start
2181 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2182 hosted weblate project page
</a>, and get in touch using
2183 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2184 translators mailing list
</a>. Please also check out
2185 <a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2186 contributors
</a>.
</p>
2188 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
2189 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
2190 Bokmål too. In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
2191 Mobi versions available. And there are incomplete translations
2192 available for many more languages.
</p>
2198 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2203 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2207 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?
</a>
2213 <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
2214 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found. I use
2215 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
2216 But I might be wrong.
</p>
2219 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
2220 results for spl-linux
</a>, there are
1019 Debian installations, or
2221 0.53% of the population, with the package installed. As far as I know
2222 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
2223 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
2224 installation on Linux in Debian. In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
2225 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
2226 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
2227 results for zfsutils
</a> show
1625 Debian installations or
0.84% of
2228 the population. So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.
</p>
2230 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
2231 <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
2232 in April
2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
2233 cleared, the package is still not in Debian. The package is again in
2234 the NEW queue. Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
2235 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
2236 to give up. The current status can be seen on
2237 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
2238 team status page
</a>, and
2239 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
2240 source code
</a> is available on Alioth.
</p>
2242 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
2243 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
2244 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
2245 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
2246 to help out the team. This was the background for my blog post about
2247 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
2248 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically
</a>, and I
2249 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
2250 copyright file. It is not very easy to check every one of the around
2251 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
2252 right. If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
2253 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.
</p>
2259 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>.
2264 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2268 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian
</a>
2274 <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
2275 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
2276 later processing and graphing. The original collector store the
2277 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
2278 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
2279 full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it
2280 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
2281 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.
</p>
2283 <p>The new tools are available in
<tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/
</tt>
2284 in the version
0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph
2285 and lifetime prediction by running:
2288 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
2291 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.
</p>
2293 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
2297 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
2300 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
2301 when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a
2302 few years of data.
</p>
2304 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
2305 collector broke in Debian. The scripts in
2306 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/
</tt> were no longer executed. I
2307 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
2308 know. The issue is reported as
2309 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #
818649</a> against
2310 pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
2311 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
2312 disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
2313 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.
</p>
2315 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2317 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
</a>
2318 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2319 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
2320 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
2321 As always, patches are very welcome.
</p>
2327 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>.
2332 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2336 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian
</a>
2342 <p>Back in September, I blogged about
2343 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
2344 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery
</a>, and
2345 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
2346 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
2347 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
2348 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
2349 package in Debian
</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
2350 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
2351 fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
2352 hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.
</p>
2354 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
2355 hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
2356 battery stats (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github
</a>) and part of the team maintaining
2357 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
2358 able to collect battery status using the
<tt>/sys/class/power_supply/
</tt>
2359 information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
2360 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
2361 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
2362 status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
2363 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
2364 tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:
</p>
2366 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width=
"70%" align=
"center"></p>
2368 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
2369 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
2370 about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
2371 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
2372 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
2373 bit more before I make a new release.
</p>
2375 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
2376 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
2377 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
2380 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
2381 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
2382 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian
</a> and
2384 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
2385 I would love some help to improve the system further.
</p>
2391 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>.
2396 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2400 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically
</a>
2406 <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
2407 details. And one of the details is the content of the
2408 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
2409 the code in the package in question, preferably in
2410 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
2411 readable DEP5 format
</a>.
</p>
2413 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
2414 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
2415 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
2416 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
2417 both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
2418 out what was wrong with
2419 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
2420 zfsonlinux copyright file
</a>, I decided to spend some time on
2421 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
2422 semi-automatically.
</p>
2424 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
2425 file based on the code in the source package,
2426 <tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake
</a></tt>
2427 and
<tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme
</a></tt>. I'm
2428 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
2429 create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
2430 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
2431 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
2433 <a href=
"http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
2434 blog posts from
2014</a>.
2436 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
2439 debmake -cc
> debian/copyright
2442 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
2443 this might not be the best option.
</p>
2445 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
2447 <a href=
"https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
2448 blog post from
2015</a>. To generate using cme, use the 'update
2449 dpkg-copyright' option:
2452 cme update dpkg-copyright
2455 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
2456 handle UTF-
8 names better than debmake.
</p>
2458 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
2459 check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
2460 <tt>debmake -k
</tt> and
<tt>license-reconcile
</tt>. The former seem
2461 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
2462 ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
2463 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
2464 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-
1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
2465 fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
2466 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
2467 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.
</p>
2469 <p>The devscripts tool
<tt>licensecheck
</tt> deserve mentioning. It
2470 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
2471 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
2472 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.
</p>
2474 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
2475 debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
2476 planet.debian.org.
</p>
2478 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2479 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2480 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2482 <p><strong>Update
2016-
02-
20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
2483 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
2486 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
2487 /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5
> debian/copyright.auto
2490 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
2491 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
2492 copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
2493 with my packages in the future.
</p>
2495 <p><strong>Update
2016-
02-
21</strong>: The cme author recommended
2496 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
2503 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>.
2508 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2512 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support
</a>
2518 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system
</a>
2519 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
2520 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
2521 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
2522 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
2525 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
2526 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-
3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
2527 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
2528 unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
2529 by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
2530 providing the example file, do like this:
</p>
2533 % apt install appstream
2537 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-
3.2.3.0.bin | \
2538 awk '/Package:/ {print $
2}'
2543 <p>See
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
2544 appstream wiki
</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
2545 a way appstream can use.
</p>
2547 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
2548 given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
2549 know how to handle. First find the mime type using
<tt>file
2550 --mime-type
</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
2551 it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
2552 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:
</p>
2555 % apt install appstream
2559 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
2560 awk '/Package:/ {print $
2}'
2584 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
2585 packages providing appstream metadata.
</p>
2591 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>.
2596 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2600 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software
</a>
2606 <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
2607 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
2608 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
2609 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
2610 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
2611 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
2612 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
2613 during installation). And when these programs send out information to
2614 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
2615 extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
2616 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
2617 good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
2618 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
2619 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
2620 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
2623 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
2625 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
2626 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
2627 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
2628 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
2629 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
2630 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
2631 tool to do so is called
2632 <a href=
"http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py
</a>. I
2633 discovered it when I read
2634 <a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
2635 article about Creepy
</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
2636 November
2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
2637 The python program was in Debian, but
2638 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
2639 Debian
</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
2640 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
2641 have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
2642 get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
2643 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
2645 <a href=
"https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream
</a>.
</p>
2647 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
2648 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
2649 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
2650 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
2651 these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
2652 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
2653 days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
2654 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
2655 information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
2656 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
2657 about yourself with the services.
</p>
2659 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
2660 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
2661 of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
2662 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
2663 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
2664 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
2665 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
2666 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
2667 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
2668 things. A similar technique have been
2669 <a href=
"http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
2670 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine
</a>, and it is both a powerful
2671 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
2672 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
2675 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
2676 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
2677 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
2678 python-requests-toolbelt).
</p>
2681 <a href=
"https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
2682 screenshots.debian.net
</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
2683 Creepy program in Debian.)
</p>
2689 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/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
2694 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2698 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe
</a>
2704 <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
2705 <a href=
"https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
2706 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
2707 believe a computer have a given security hole
</a> if it download a
2708 security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
2709 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
2710 listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
2711 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
2712 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
2713 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
2714 <a href=
"http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
2715 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror
</a>. He
2716 was not the first to propose this, as the
2717 <tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor
</a></tt>
2718 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
2719 to use
<a href=
"https://www.torproject.org/">Tor
</a>, but I was not
2720 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.
</p>
2722 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
2723 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
2724 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
2725 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
2726 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.
</p>
2728 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
2729 installing
<tt>apt-transport-tor
</tt> and replacing http and https
2730 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
2731 of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
2732 <tt>etckeeper
</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
2736 apt install apt-transport-tor
2737 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2738 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2741 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
2742 the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
2743 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
2744 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.
</p>
2746 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
2747 <tt>apt-file
</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
2748 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
2749 <tt>apt-file
</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
2750 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
2751 need a working
<tt>apt-file
</tt>, this is not for you.
</p>
2753 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
2754 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
2755 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
2756 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
2757 become normal for the machine in question.
</p>
2759 <p>On
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
</a>, APT
2760 is set up by default to use
<tt>apt-transport-tor
</tt> when Tor is
2761 enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
2768 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>.
2773 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2777 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software
</a>
2783 <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
2784 call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
2785 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
2786 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
2787 exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
2788 time, as we kids have plenty of it.
</p>
2790 <p>A few days I came across
2791 <a href=
"https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
2792 project
</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
2793 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
2794 "car numbers" in a machine readable format. I've been looking for
2795 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
2796 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
2797 number plate recognition
</a> tool only is available in the hands of
2798 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
2799 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
2800 discovered the developer
2801 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
2802 Debian
</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
2803 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
2806 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
2807 it into Debian, where it currently
2808 <a href=
"https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
2809 in the NEW queue
</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.
</p>
2811 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
2812 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
2813 surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
2814 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
2815 when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
2816 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
2817 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
2818 car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
2819 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
2820 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
2821 guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
2822 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.
</p>
2824 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
2825 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
2826 before running "debuild" to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
2827 package show up in unstable.
</p>
2833 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/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
2838 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2842 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian
</a>
2848 <p>Around three years ago, I created
2849 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
2850 system
</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
2851 hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
2852 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
2853 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
2854 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
2855 tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
2856 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
2857 install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
2858 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
2859 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
2862 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
2863 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
2864 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
2865 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
2866 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
2867 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
2868 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2869 appstream system
</a> was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
2870 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
2871 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
2872 Debian version of appstream.
</p>
2874 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
2875 and today I uploaded a new version
0.20 of isenkram adding support for
2876 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
2877 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
2878 pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
2879 how do add the required
2880 <a href=
"https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
2881 in pymissile
</a>. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
2885 <?xml
version="
1.0"
encoding="UTF-
8"?
>
2887 <id
>pymissile
</id
>
2888 <metadata_license
>MIT
</metadata_license
>
2889 <name
>pymissile
</name
>
2890 <summary
>Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
</summary
>
2893 Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
2894 Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
2895 motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
2898 </description
>
2900 <modalias
>usb:v1130p0202d*
</modalias
>
2905 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
2906 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
2907 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
2908 will map to all USB devices with vendor code
1130 and product code
2911 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
2912 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
2913 appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
2914 these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
2915 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
2916 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
2917 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
2918 upstream for this project is dormant.
</p>
2920 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
2921 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
2922 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
2923 package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
2924 line to debian/pymissile.install:
</p>
2927 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
2930 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
2931 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
2932 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
2933 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
2936 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
2937 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a> proposal.
</p>
2939 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
2940 try running this command on the command line:
</p>
2943 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
2946 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2947 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2948 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a>.
</p>
2954 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
2959 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2963 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust
</a>
2969 <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
2970 "
<a href=
"http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
2971 GPL is not magic pixie dust
</a>" explain the importance of making sure
2972 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
">GPL</a> is enforced.
2973 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
2977 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png
" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!
" align="right
" border="0" /></a></p>
2980 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
2982 The first step is to choose a
2983 <a href="https://copyleft.org/
">copyleft</a> license for your
2986 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
2987 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
2989 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
2992 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
2995 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/
">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
2996 <a href="http://faif.us/
" title="Free as in Freedom
">FaiF</a>
2997 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/
2015/nov/
24/
0x57/
">episode
2998 0x57</a></small></p>
3000 <p>As the Debian Website
3001 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/
794116">used</a>
3002 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=
1.24&r2=
1.25">to</a>
3003 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
3004 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
3005 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
3006 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
3007 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
3008 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
3009 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
3010 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
3011 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
3012 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/
" title="Free as in
3014 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/
2015/nov/
24/
0x57/
">episode 0x57</a>,
3015 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
3016 to protect it. The reality of today's world is that legal
3017 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
3018 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/
">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
3019 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/
20151027-homepage-recovers/
">until</a>
3020 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/
">Software
3021 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
3022 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
3023 In March the SFC supported a
3024 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/mar/
05/vmware-lawsuit/
">lawsuit
3025 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
3026 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html
">comply
3027 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
3028 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
3030 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
24/faif-carols-fundraiser/
">blocked
3031 or cancelled their talks</a>. As a result they have decided to rely
3032 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
3033 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
3034 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/nov/
23/
2015fundraiser/
">launched</a>
3035 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">campaign</a> to create
3036 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
3037 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
3040 <p>If you support Free Software,
3041 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
26/like-what-I-do/
">like</a>
3042 what the SFC do, agree with their
3043 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html
">compliance
3044 principles</a>, are happy about their
3045 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">successes</a> in 2015,
3046 work on a project that is an SFC
3047 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/
">member</a> and or
3048 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
3049 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA
">Christopher
3051 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
24/faif-carols-fundraiser/
">Carol
3053 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/
2015/
11/
25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/
">Jono
3054 Bacon</a>, myself and
3055 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters
">others</a> in
3057 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">supporter</a>. For the
3058 next week your donation will be
3059 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/nov/
27/black-friday/
">matched</a>
3060 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
3061 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don't forget to
3062 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
3063 social media accounts.</p>
3067 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
3068 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
3075 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/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
3080 <div class="padding
"></div>
3084 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html
">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
3090 <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
3091 set it up properly. I wanted to generate it offline and have it
3092 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp
">a OpenPGP
3093 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
3094 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever. But
3095 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
3096 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key. See
3097 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2015-
11-
17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt
">the
3098 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
3099 the details. This is my new key:</p>
3102 pub 3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/
111D6B29EE4E02F9.html
">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
3103 Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1 D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
3104 uid Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
3105 uid Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@debian.org>
3106 sub 4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3107 sub 4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3108 sub 4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3111 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
3114 <p>If you signed my old key
3115 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html
">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
3116 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
3117 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
3118 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
3124 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>.
3129 <div class="padding
"></div>
3133 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html
">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
3139 <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
3140 But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
3141 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
3142 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
3143 all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
3144 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
3145 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
3147 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2015-
09-
24-laptop-battery-graph.png
"/>
3149 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
3150 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
3151 by someone else. I found
3152 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats</a>,
3153 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
3154 broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
3155 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
3157 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/
2013/
08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
">a
3158 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
3160 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git
">batlog</a>, not
3161 available in Debian.</p>
3163 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
3164 battery stats ever since. Now my
3165 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
3166 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
3167 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My
3168 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
3173 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
3175 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
3176 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
3178 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
3179 energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
3181 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
3192 # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
3193 # when several log processes run in parallel.
3194 msg=$(printf
"%s," $(date +%s); \
3195 for f in $files; do \
3196 printf
"%s," $(cat $f); \
3201 cd /sys/class/power_supply
3204 (cd $bat && log_battery
>> "$logfile")
3208 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
3209 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
3210 and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value
3211 every
10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery
3212 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
3213 The code for the Debian package
3214 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
3215 available on github
</a>.
</p>
3217 <p>The collected log file look like this:
</p>
3220 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
3221 1376591133,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
62800000,
62160000,
39050000,
0,Discharging,
3223 1443090528,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
4900000,
62160000,
4900000,
0,Full,
3224 1443090601,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
4900000,
62160000,
4900000,
0,Full,
3227 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
3228 over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
3231 <p>But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always
3232 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
3233 satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe
3234 <a href=
"http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
3235 University
</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
3236 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to
100%
3237 all the time, but to stay below
90% of full charge most of the time.
3238 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
3239 <a href=
"http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
3240 the charge of their batteries to
80%
</a>, with the option to charge to
3241 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
3242 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
3243 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
3246 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
3247 stop charging at
80%, unless requested to charge to
100% once in
3248 preparation for a longer trip? I found
3249 <a href=
"http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
3250 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
3251 80%
</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
3254 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than
100%
3255 at the start. I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
3256 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
3257 back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge
3258 speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try
3259 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
3260 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
3263 <p>Update
2015-
09-
24: I got a tip to install the packages
3264 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
3265 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
3266 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge
40 80' to change when charging start
3267 and stop. I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
3268 and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
3275 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>.
3280 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3284 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback
</a>
3290 <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
3291 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to
3292 thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of
3293 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
3294 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
3295 machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
3296 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
3297 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did
3298 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
3299 using
<a href=
"http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans
</a>, but it
3300 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.
</p>
3302 <p>One tip I got was to use the
3303 <a href=
"https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint
</a> web service to
3304 compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than
3305 prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
3306 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook
840 keyboard is not
3307 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
3308 keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
3310 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
3311 newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
3312 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
3313 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
3314 <a href=
"http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net
</a>. The reports I
3315 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard
3316 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
3317 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
3318 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
3319 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
3320 replace it. I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
3321 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I'm
3322 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
3323 noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
3324 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.
</p>
3326 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
3327 <a href=
"http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star
</a>, another was
3328 <a href=
"http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot
</a>.
3329 The latter look very attractive to me.
</p>
3331 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot
3332 as I keep looking for a replacement.
</p>
3334 <p>Update
2015-
07-
06: I was recommended to check out the
3335 <a href=
"">lapstore.de
</a> web shop for used laptops. They got several
3337 <a href=
"http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
3338 thinkpad X models
</a>, and provide one year warranty.
</p>
3344 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>.
3349 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3353 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years
</a>
3359 <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
3360 replacement soon. The left
5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
3361 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
3362 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
3365 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
3367 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
3368 described them in
2013</a>. The last time I bought a laptop, I had
3370 <a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no
</a>
3371 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
3372 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually. Three button mouse
3373 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
3374 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook
820 G1 and
3375 G2) lack three mouse buttons). It is also unclear to me how good the
3376 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are. I hope Lenovo have not messed up
3377 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
3378 deteriorated since X41.
</p>
3380 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
3381 seem sensible to me? Are there better services around to search the
3382 set of available laptops for features? Please send me an email if you
3383 have suggestions.
</p>
3385 <p>Update
2015-
07-
23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
3386 <a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
3387 of endorsed hardware
</a>, which is useful background information.
</p>
3393 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>.
3398 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3402 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie
</a>
3408 <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
3409 sysvinit as its boot system by default. But how can one keep using
3410 sysvinit in Jessie? It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
3412 <a href=
"http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
3414 <a href=
"http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
3417 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
3418 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
3419 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit
</tt> with this content before
3422 <p><blockquote><pre>
3423 Package: systemd-sysv
3424 Pin: release o=Debian
3426 </pre></blockquote><p>
3428 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
3429 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
3430 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
3431 systemd as a default boot system. The end result should be that the
3432 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.
</p>
3434 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
3435 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
3436 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
3437 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot. Either by
3438 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
3439 preseed file used. First, the kernel command line argument:
3441 <p><blockquote><pre>
3442 preseed/
late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
3443 </pre></blockquote><p>
3445 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:
</p>
3447 <p><blockquote><pre>
3448 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
3449 </pre></blockquote><p>
3451 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
3452 the sysvinit-core package.
</p>
3454 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
3455 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
3456 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
3457 devices show up during boot. But on the other hand, the new default
3458 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
3459 Jessie is released.
</p>
3461 <p>Update
2014-
11-
26: Inspired by
3462 <ahref=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
3463 blog post by Torsten Glaser
</a>, added --purge to the preseed
3470 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>.
3475 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3479 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4
</a>
3485 <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
3486 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
3487 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.
</p>
3489 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
3490 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
3491 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
3492 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
3493 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
3494 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
3495 to the people peeking on the wire. I
3496 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
3497 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October
</a> and got a
3498 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
3499 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
3500 documented by Johannes Berg as early as
2006, and both
3501 <a href=
"https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
3502 Mailpile
</a> and
<a href=
"http://dee.su/cables">the Cables
</a> systems
3503 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.
</p>
3505 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
3506 providing the SMTP protocol on port
25, and use email addresses
3507 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
3508 the connections to port
25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
3509 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
3510 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
3511 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
3512 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
3513 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
3514 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
3515 were fairly easy, and
3516 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
3517 source code for the Debian package
</a> is available from github. I
3518 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
3519 useful approach.
</p>
3521 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
3522 mail system installed (or run
<tt>apt-get purge exim4-config
</tt> to
3523 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
3524 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
3525 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service
</tt> and follow
3526 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
3527 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
3530 <p><blockquote><pre>
3531 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
3532 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
3533 </pre></blockquote></p>
3535 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
3536 address with your own address to test your server. :)
</p>
3538 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
3539 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
3540 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
3541 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
3542 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
3543 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
3544 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
3545 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
3546 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
3547 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
3550 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
3551 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
</tt> mail address, deliverable over
3558 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
3563 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3567 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software
</a>
3573 <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
3574 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
3575 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
3576 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
3577 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
3578 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
3579 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
3580 <a href=
"http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
3581 listadmin program
</a>. It allow you to check lists for new messages
3582 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
3583 lists I recently took over:
</p>
3585 <p><blockquote><pre>
3586 % time listadmin xiph
3587 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3588 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3594 </pre></blockquote></p>
3596 <p>In
1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
3597 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
3598 currently moderate
68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
3599 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
3600 ago, there were
400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
3601 less than
15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
3605 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
3606 package
</a> from Debian and create a file
<tt>~/.listadmin.ini
</tt>
3607 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:
</p>
3609 <p><blockquote><pre>
3610 username username@example.org
3613 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
3616 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
3617 mailman-list@lists.example.com
3620 other-list@otherserver.example.org
3621 </pre></blockquote></p>
3623 <p>There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
3624 learn the details.
</p>
3626 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
3627 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
3628 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
3629 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:
</p>
3631 <p><blockquote><pre>
3632 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 listadmin
3633 </pre></blockquote></p>
3635 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
3636 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
3637 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
3638 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
3639 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
3642 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of
68
3643 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
3644 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
3645 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
3648 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3649 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3650 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3652 <p>Update
2014-
10-
27: Added missing 'username' statement in
3653 configuration example. Also, I've been told that the
3654 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
3661 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/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
3666 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3670 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation
</a>
3676 <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
3677 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
3678 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
3679 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
3680 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
3681 package
</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
3682 to do this using simple preseeding.
</p>
3684 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
3685 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
3686 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
3687 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
3690 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
3691 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
3692 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
3693 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
3694 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
3695 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
3696 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
3697 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
3698 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
3699 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.
</p>
3701 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
3702 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
3703 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
3704 hardware it is the only option in Debian.
</p>
3706 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
3707 firmware installed automatically by the installer:
</p>
3709 <p><blockquote><pre>
3710 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
3711 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
3712 </pre></blockquote></p>
3714 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
3715 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
3716 do not work well, so use version
0.15 or later. Installing both
3717 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
3718 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
3719 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
3720 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
3721 implemented in the package currently in unstable.
</p>
3723 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
3724 this recipe work for you. :)
</p>
3726 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
3727 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
3728 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
3729 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
3730 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):
</p>
3732 <p><blockquote><pre>
3733 Task: isenkram-packages
3735 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3736 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3738 Test-new-install: show show
3740 Packages: for-current-hardware
3742 Task: isenkram-firmware
3744 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3745 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
3746 packages are proposed.
3747 Test-new-install: mark show
3749 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
3750 </pre></blockquote></p>
3752 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
3753 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
3754 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
3755 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
3756 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
3758 <p><blockquote><pre>
3761 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
3763 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3764 </pre></blockquote></p>
3766 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
3767 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)
</p>
3769 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
3770 installed, run
<tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
3771 --new-install
</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
3774 <p><a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> will be
3775 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
3776 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.
</p>
3782 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
3787 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3791 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo
</a>
3797 <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
3798 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
3799 with Linux kernel
3.2.0-
23 (ie probably version
12.04 LTS) was stuck
3800 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:
</p>
3802 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
3804 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
3805 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
3806 <a href=
"http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal
</a>.
</p>
3812 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>.
3817 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3821 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version
0.17 is ready
</a>
3827 <p>The
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project
</a>
3828 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
3829 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
3830 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
3833 <p>I just wrapped up
3834 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
3835 new lsdvd release
</a>, available in git or from
3836 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
3837 download page
</a>. This is the changelog dated
2014-
10-
03 for version
3842 <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks
</li>
3843 <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
3844 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection
</li>
3845 <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles
</li>
3846 <li>Fix pallete display of first entry
</li>
3847 <li>Fix include orders
</li>
3848 <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway
</li>
3849 <li>Fix the chapter count
</li>
3850 <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
3851 the palette size is the same.
</li>
3852 <li>Fix array printing.
</li>
3853 <li>Correct subsecond calculations.
</li>
3854 <li>Add sector information to the output format.
</li>
3855 <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
3856 with more GCC compiler warnings.
</li>
3860 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
3861 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
3862 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)
</p>
3868 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/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
3873 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3877 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer
</a>
3883 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3884 project
</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3885 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3886 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3887 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3888 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3889 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3890 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3891 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3893 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3894 status
</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3895 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3896 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
3897 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.
</p>
3899 <p>First, download the test ISO via
3900 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp
</a>,
3901 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http
</a>
3903 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-
1.iso).
3904 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
3905 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
3906 install with some tweaking.
</p>
3908 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
3909 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run
</p>
3911 <p><blockquote><pre>
3912 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
3913 </pre></blockquote></p>
3915 <p>and add 'exit
0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
3916 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
3917 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
3918 due to a known bug in eatmydata.
</p>
3920 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
3921 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
3922 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
3925 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
3926 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
3927 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
3928 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
3929 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
3930 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
3931 once the education-tasks package version
1.801 enter testing in two
3934 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
3935 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
3936 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
3937 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
3938 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
3939 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
3940 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
3941 provided in bug
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#
702711</a>.
3942 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.
</p>
3944 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
3945 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
3946 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.
</p>
3952 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>.
3957 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3961 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool
</a>
3967 <p>I use the
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool
</a>
3968 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
3969 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
3970 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
3971 any new development since
2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
3972 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
3973 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
3974 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
3975 get
<a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
3976 into Debian
</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
3977 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
3978 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
3979 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.
</p>
3981 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
3982 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
3983 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
3984 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
3985 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
3986 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
3987 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
3988 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source
</a> and join
3989 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
3996 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/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
4001 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4005 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert
</a>
4011 <p>The
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> installer could be
4012 a lot quicker. When we install more than
2000 packages in
4013 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> using
4014 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
4015 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
4016 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #
613428</a> about too
4017 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
4018 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
4019 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
4020 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
4021 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
4022 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
4023 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
4024 relevant while the installer is running.
</p>
4026 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
4027 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
4028 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
4029 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
4030 depend on the small and clever package
4031 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata
</a>, which
4032 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
4033 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
4034 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
4035 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
4036 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
4037 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
4038 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
4039 "eatmydata
$program
$@", to get the same effect.
4040 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
4041 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.
</p>
4043 <p>The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
4044 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from
64 to less than
44
4045 minutes (
20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
4046 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
4047 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
4048 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
4049 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
4050 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
4051 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
4052 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
4053 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
4054 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
4055 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
4056 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
4062 <th>Machine/setup
</th>
4063 <th>Original tasksel
</th>
4064 <th>Optimised tasksel
</th>
4069 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE
</td>
4070 <td>64 min (
07:
46-
08:
50)
</td>
4071 <td><44 min (
11:
27-
12:
11)
</td>
4072 <td>>20 min
18%
</td>
4076 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE
</td>
4077 <td>57 min (
08:
48-
09:
45)
</td>
4078 <td>34 min (
07:
43-
08:
17)
</td>
4083 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal
</td>
4084 <td>22 min (
10:
37-
10:
59)
</td>
4085 <td>11 min (
11:
16-
11:
27)
</td>
4090 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal
</td>
4091 <td>6 min (
08:
19-
08:
25)
</td>
4092 <td>4 min (
08:
04-
08:
08)
</td>
4097 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE
</td>
4098 <td>19 min (
09:
21-
09:
40)
</td>
4099 <td>15 min (
10:
25-
10:
40)
</td>
4105 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
4106 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
4107 was
100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
4108 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
4109 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
4112 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
4113 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
4114 Installer
</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
4115 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
4116 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
4117 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
4118 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
4119 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
4120 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
4121 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
4122 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
4123 for the entire installation.
</p>
4125 <p>I've implemented this in the
4126 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install
</a>
4127 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
4128 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
4129 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
4130 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:
</p>
4132 <p><blockquote><pre>
4135 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4137 logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
4140 logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
4142 override_install() {
4143 apt-install eatmydata || true
4144 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
4145 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4147 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
4148 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
4149 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
4150 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
4152 chmod
755 /target$file.edu
4153 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4154 --rename --quiet --add $file
4155 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
4157 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
4161 error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
4166 </pre></blockquote></p>
4168 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
4169 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
4171 <p><blockquote><pre>
4173 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4175 logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
4177 remove_install_override() {
4178 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4180 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
4182 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4183 --rename --quiet --remove $file
4186 error "Missing divert for $file."
4189 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
4192 remove_install_override
4193 </pre></blockquote></p>
4195 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
4196 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
4197 finish-install.d scripts.
</p>
4199 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
4200 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
4201 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
4202 depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I
4203 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
4204 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
4205 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
4206 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
4209 <p>Update
2014-
09-
24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
4210 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
4211 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #
702711</a>. An updated
4212 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.
</p>
4214 <p>Update
2014-
10-
17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
4215 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
4216 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
4217 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
4218 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.
</p>
4220 <p>Update
2014-
11-
11: Unfortunately, a new
4221 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #
765738</a> in eatmydata only
4222 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
4223 optimization again. If
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
4224 request
768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.
</p>
4230 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>.
4235 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4239 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net
</a>
4245 <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
4246 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> about
4247 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
4248 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net
</a>, and was very happy to
4249 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
4250 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
4251 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
4252 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
4253 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
4254 those problems are gone now.
</p>
4256 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
4257 <a href=
"https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net
</a> service
4258 there is a pool of more than
100 keyservers which are checked every
4259 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
4260 better than what I have used so far. :)
</p>
4262 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
4263 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
4264 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?
</p>
4266 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
4269 <p><blockquote><pre>
4270 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
4271 </pre></blockquote></p>
4273 <p>With GnuPG version
2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
4274 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
4275 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
4276 keyserver automatically should their need it:
</p>
4278 <p><blockquote><pre>
4279 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
4280 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record
0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
4282 </pre></blockquote></p>
4285 <a href=
"http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
4286 HKP lookup protocol
</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
4287 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
4288 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
4289 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
4290 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
4291 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
4292 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
4293 for a future version of the protocol?
</p>
4299 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/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
4304 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4308 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook
</a>
4314 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4315 project
</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
4316 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
4317 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
4318 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.
</p>
4320 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
4321 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
4322 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
4323 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
4324 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
4325 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
4326 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
4327 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
4328 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
4329 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
4330 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
4333 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
4334 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
4335 wiki
</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
4336 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
4337 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
4338 chapters together into one large web page (aka
4339 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
4340 AllInOne page
</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
4341 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
4342 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin
</a> installation on
4343 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
4344 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format
</a>, we can fetch
4345 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
4346 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
4347 manual. This process also download images and transform image
4348 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
4349 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
4350 using the
<tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual
</tt> program, and the
4351 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
4352 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
4353 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
4354 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
4355 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
4356 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.
</p>
4358 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
4359 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
4360 track the English original. For this we use the
4361 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml
</a> package,
4362 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
4363 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
4364 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
4365 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
4366 files), which the translations update with the native language
4367 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
4368 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
4369 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
4370 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
4371 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
4372 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
4373 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
4374 of the documentation.
</p>
4376 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
4378 <a href=
"http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize
</a>,
4379 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
4380 <a href=
"http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle
</a> or
4381 <a href=
"https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex
</a>. All we care about
4382 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
4383 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
4384 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
4385 against the debian-edu-doc package
</a>.
</p>
4387 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
4388 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
4389 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
4390 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
4391 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
4392 translated images by storing translated versions in
4393 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
4394 package maintainers know more.
</p>
4396 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
4397 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
4398 of the documentation packages on the web
</a>. See for example the
4399 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
4400 PDF version
</a> or the
4401 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
4402 HTML version
</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
4403 but perhaps it will be done in the future.
</p>
4405 <p>To learn more, check out
4406 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
4407 debian-edu-doc package
</a>,
4408 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
4409 manual on the wiki
</a> and
4410 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
4411 translation instructions
</a> in the manual.
</p>
4417 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/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4422 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4426 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram
0.7)
</a>
4432 <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
4433 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
4434 So I implemented one, using
4435 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
4436 package
</a>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
4437 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
4438 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you
4439 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
4440 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.
<p>
4442 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
4443 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
4444 packages to install. The first part is in
4445 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc
</tt> and look like
4448 <p><blockquote><pre>
4451 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4452 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4454 Test-new-install: mark show
4456 Packages: for-current-hardware
4457 </pre></blockquote></p>
4459 <p>The second part is in
4460 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware
</tt> and look like
4463 <p><blockquote><pre>
4468 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4470 </pre></blockquote></p>
4472 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
4473 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
4474 have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to
4475 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
4476 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
4477 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.
</p>
4479 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
4480 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
4481 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
4482 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
4483 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
4484 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#
719837</a> and
4485 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#
730704</a>). The cause is in
4486 the python-apt code (bug
4487 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#
745487</a>), but using a
4488 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
4489 reduce the memory leak from ~
30 MiB per hardware detection down to
4490 around
2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
4491 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version
0.7 uploaded to
4494 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
4495 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
4496 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
4497 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
4498 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a>, and
4499 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
4500 project
</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
4501 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
4502 start using the information when it is ready.
</p>
4504 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
4505 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
4506 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
4507 package
</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
4509 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
4510 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a> for details on the notation. I expect
4511 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
4512 moment I got no better place to store it.
</p>
4518 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4523 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4527 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
</a>
4533 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4534 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
4535 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
4536 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
4537 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
4538 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p>
4540 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
4541 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
4542 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
4543 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
4544 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
4545 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
4546 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p>
4548 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
4549 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>,
4550 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth
</a>,
4551 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite
</a>,
4552 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor
</a>,
4553 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>,
4554 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud
</a> and
4555 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq
</a>. There
4556 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
4557 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
4558 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
4559 the manual
</a> and help us improve it.
</p>
4561 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
4562 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
4566 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4567 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4569 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4571 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4574 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4575 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
4576 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
4577 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
4578 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
4579 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
4580 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
4581 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p>
4583 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4584 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4585 the preseed values:
</p>
4588 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
4591 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
4594 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
4595 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
4596 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
4597 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
4598 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
4599 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
4600 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p>
4602 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4603 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4604 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4605 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
4606 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4607 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
4613 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
4618 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4622 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software
</a>
4628 <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
4629 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
4630 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
4631 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
4632 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
4633 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
4634 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
4635 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
4636 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
4637 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
4638 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
4639 have looked at a system called
4640 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL
</a>, a locally
4641 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p>
4643 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
4644 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
4645 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
4646 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
4647 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
4648 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
4649 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
4650 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
4651 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
4652 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
4653 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
4654 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
4655 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p>
4657 <p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
4658 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt>apt-get
4659 install s3ql
</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
4660 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
4661 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
4662 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a>, because I trust the laws
4663 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
4664 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
4665 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
4666 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
4667 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
4668 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
4669 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
4670 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
4673 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
4674 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
4675 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
4676 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4677 I'll refer to it as
<tt>bucket-name
</tt> below. In addition, one need
4678 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
4679 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4681 <p><blockquote><pre>
4683 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
4684 backend-login: API-login
4685 backend-password: API-password
4686 fs-passphrase: local-password
4687 </pre></blockquote></p>
4689 <p>I create my local passphrase using
<tt>pwget
50</tt> or similar,
4690 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4691 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4692 details and password to create it:
</p>
4694 <p><blockquote><pre>
4695 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4696 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4697 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
4698 Enter backend login:
4699 Enter backend password:
4700 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4701 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4702 Enter encryption password:
4703 Confirm encryption password:
4704 Generating random encryption key...
4705 Creating metadata tables...
4715 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4716 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4717 #
</pre></blockquote></p>
4719 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4721 <p><blockquote><pre>
4722 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4723 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
4724 Using
4 upload threads.
4725 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4735 Mounting filesystem...
4737 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4738 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
4740 </pre></blockquote></p>
4742 <p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
4743 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4744 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4745 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4746 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4747 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4749 <p><blockquote><pre>
4752 </pre></blockquote></p>
4754 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4755 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
4756 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4757 mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
4760 <p><blockquote><pre>
4761 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
4762 Using cached metadata.
4763 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4764 Checking DB integrity...
4765 Creating temporary extra indices...
4766 Checking lost+found...
4767 Checking cached objects...
4768 Checking names (refcounts)...
4769 Checking contents (names)...
4770 Checking contents (inodes)...
4771 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4772 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4773 Checking objects (backend)...
4774 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
4775 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
4776 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
4777 Checking objects (sizes)...
4778 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4779 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4780 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4781 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4782 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4783 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4784 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4785 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4786 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4787 Checking directory reachability...
4788 Checking unix conventions...
4789 Checking referential integrity...
4790 Dropping temporary indices...
4791 Backing up old metadata...
4801 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4802 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4804 </pre></blockquote></p>
4806 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4807 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
4808 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4809 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
4810 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4811 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4812 Both were measured using
<tt>dd
</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
4813 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
4814 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4817 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4818 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4821 <p><blockquote><pre>
4822 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4823 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
4824 Using
8 upload threads.
4825 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4827 </pre></blockquote></p>
4829 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4830 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
4831 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4832 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4835 <p><blockquote><pre>
4836 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4837 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4839 </pre></blockquote></p>
4841 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4842 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4843 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4846 <p><blockquote><pre>
4848 Directory entries:
9141
4851 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
4852 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
4853 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
4854 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4855 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4857 </pre></blockquote></p>
4859 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4860 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4861 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud
</a>,
4862 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive
</a>,
4863 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a>,
4864 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace
</a> and
4865 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud
</A>. The latter even
4866 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
4867 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4868 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4871 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4872 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
4873 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4874 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
4876 "
<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4877 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4878 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4879 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4880 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
4882 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4883 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4884 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4885 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
4886 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
4887 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4888 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
4889 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4891 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4892 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4893 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4894 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
4895 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4896 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4897 only read from it.</p>
4899 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4900 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4901 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4907 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software
">nice free software</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>.
4912 <div class="padding
"></div>
4916 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html
">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
4922 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
4923 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4924 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4925 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4926 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
4927 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4930 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4931 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4932 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4933 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4934 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4935 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
4936 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
4937 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4939 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap
</a>
4940 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4943 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4945 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4946 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4948 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4951 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4952 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4953 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to
<a
4954 href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4955 vmdebootstrap
</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4958 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4959 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4960 the preseed values:
</p>
4963 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
4966 <p>But note that due to
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4967 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie
</a>, the installer will
4968 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
4969 '
<tt>apt-cdrom ident
</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4970 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
4971 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.
</p>
4973 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4974 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4975 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4976 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
4977 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4978 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
4984 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
4989 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4993 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release
1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)
</a>
4999 <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
5000 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
5001 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. I called the project
5002 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
5003 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer
</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
5004 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
5005 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
5006 proper home since then.
</p>
5008 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
5009 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
5010 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
5011 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth
</a>, but did not have time
5012 to follow up on it. Until today. :)
</p>
5014 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
5015 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
5016 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
5017 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
5018 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
5019 release and call it
1.0. Visit the new project home on
5020 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/
</a>
5021 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
5022 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable
</a>.
</p>
5028 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>.
5033 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5037 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd
</a>
5043 <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
5044 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
5045 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
5046 <a href=
"https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
5047 Google Summer of Code work
</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
5048 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
5049 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
5050 <a href=
"http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz
</a>,
5051 and started it using virt-manager.
</p>
5053 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
5054 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
5055 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
5056 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page
</a> and ran these
5057 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
5058 kvm internal DHCP server:
</p>
5060 <p><blockquote><pre>
5061 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
5062 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $
2}')
5063 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $
2}')
5065 </pre></blockquote></p>
5067 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
5068 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
5069 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.
</p>
5071 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
5072 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
5073 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
5074 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
5077 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
5080 <p><blockquote><pre>
5081 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list
<<EOF
5082 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
5085 apt-get dist-upgrade
5086 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
5087 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
5088 update-alternatives --config runsystem
5089 </pre></blockquote></p>
5091 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
5092 <tt>reboot-hurd
</tt> instead of just
<tt>reboot
</tt>, as there is not
5093 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
5094 'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
5095 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
5096 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
5097 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
5098 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
5101 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
5102 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
5103 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
5104 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
5105 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
5106 adding this repository to the machine:
</p>
5108 <p><blockquote><pre>
5109 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list
<<EOF
5110 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
5112 </pre></blockquote></p>
5114 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
5115 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
5116 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
5117 BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:
</p>
5119 <p><blockquote><pre>
5120 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
5121 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
5122 i gdb - GNU Debugger
5123 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
5124 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
5125 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
5126 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
5127 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
5128 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
5129 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
5130 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
5131 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
5132 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
5133 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
5134 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
5135 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
5137 </pre></blockquote></p>
5139 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
5140 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
5141 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
5142 command line stuff.
<p>
5148 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>.
5153 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5157 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release
0.16</a>
5163 <p><a href=
"http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity
</a> is a nice tool to
5164 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5165 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5166 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5167 the source. The company behind it provide
5168 <a href=
"https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5169 a community service
</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5170 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5171 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5172 <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash
</a> and
5173 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool
</a>
5174 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
5175 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5176 check, and decided to
<a href=
"http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5177 checking of the chrpath project
</a>. It was
5178 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
5179 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5180 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5181 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5182 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5183 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
5184 <a href=
"https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5185 mailing list for the chrpath developers
</a>, I decided it was time to
5186 publish a new release. These are the release notes:
</p>
5188 <p>New in
0.16 released
2014-
01-
14:
</p>
5192 <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.
</li>
5193 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.
</li>
5194 <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.
</li>
5199 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5200 new version
0.16 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
5201 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
5202 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5203 include a test suite check.
</p>
5209 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5214 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5218 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release
0.15</a>
5224 <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5225 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5226 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5227 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5228 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
5229 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5230 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc
64-bit Little Endian) he
5231 is working on. I checked the
5232 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian
</a>,
5233 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu
</a> and
5234 <a href=
"https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora
</a>
5235 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5236 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5237 These are the release notes:
</p>
5239 <p>New in
0.15 released
2013-
11-
24:
</p>
5243 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5244 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5247 <li>Updated README with current URLs.
</li>
5249 <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5250 Matthias Klose.
</li>
5252 <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5253 Petr Machata found in Fedora.
</li>
5255 <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5256 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
5257 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.
</li>
5262 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5263 new version
0.15 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
5264 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
5265 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5266 include a testsuite check.
</p>
5272 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5277 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5281 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog
</a>
5287 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5288 <a href=
"http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5289 init.d scripts
</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5290 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5291 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:
</p>
5294 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5297 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
5298 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
5299 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
5300 # Default-Start:
2 3 4 5
5301 # Default-Stop:
0 1 6
5302 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5303 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5304 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5305 # used as a drop-in replacement.
5307 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5308 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5311 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5312 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
5315 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
5316 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5321 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5322 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
5323 # and status_of_proc is working.
5324 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5327 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5333 #
0 if daemon has been started
5334 #
1 if daemon was already running
5335 #
2 if daemon could not be started
5336 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
5338 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5341 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5342 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5343 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5347 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5352 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
5353 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
5354 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
5355 # other if a failure occurred
5356 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5358 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
5359 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5360 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5361 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5362 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5363 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
5364 # sleep for some time.
5365 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
5366 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
5367 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5373 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5377 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5378 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5379 # then implement that here.
5381 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5386 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
5387 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5388 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5396 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5397 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5399 # Exit if the package is not installed
5400 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
5402 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5403 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5405 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5410 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5413 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
5414 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
5418 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5421 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
5422 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
5426 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
5428 #reload|force-reload)
5430 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5431 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5433 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5437 restart|force-reload)
5439 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5440 # 'force-reload' alias
5442 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5449 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
5450 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
5460 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
5468 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
5469 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
5470 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
5471 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
5473 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
5474 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
5475 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
5476 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
5477 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
5483 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>.
5488 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5492 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian
</a>
5498 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
5499 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5500 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5501 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5502 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5503 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
5504 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5505 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5506 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
5507 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
5508 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
5509 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
5511 <p>The source is now available from
5512 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary
</a>.
</p>
5518 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>.
5523 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5527 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images
</a>
5534 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
5535 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
5536 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
5537 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
5538 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
5539 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
5540 of a plan to simplify the build system for
5541 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
5542 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
5543 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
5544 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
5547 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
5548 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
5549 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
5550 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
5551 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
5552 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
5553 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
5554 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
5555 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
5556 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
5557 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
5558 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
5559 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
5560 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
5561 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
5562 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
5563 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
5564 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
5565 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
5566 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
5567 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
5569 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
5570 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
5572 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
5573 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
5574 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
5579 set -e # Exit on first error
5582 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
5583 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
5585 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
5586 # install a kernel somewhere too.
5587 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
5588 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5589 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5590 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
5591 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
5592 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
5595 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
5596 to build the image:
</p>
5599 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
5602 --distribution jessie \
5603 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
5612 --root-password raspberry \
5613 --hostname raspberrypi \
5614 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
5615 --customize `pwd`/customize \
5617 --package git-core \
5618 --package binutils \
5619 --package ca-certificates \
5624 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
5625 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
5626 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
5627 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
5628 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
5629 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
5630 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
5632 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
5633 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
5634 build dependency list.
</p>
5636 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
5637 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
5638 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
5639 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
5645 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>.
5650 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5654 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway
</a>
5660 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
5661 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
5664 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
5665 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
5666 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
5667 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
5668 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
5669 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
5670 hope you will to. :)
</p>
5672 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
5673 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
5674 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
5675 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
5676 donated. Are you next?
</p>
5678 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
5679 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
5680 statement under the heading
5681 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
5682 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
5683 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
5690 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
5695 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5699 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning
</a>
5705 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
5706 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
5707 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
5708 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
5712 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
5713 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5715 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
5716 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5718 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
5719 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
5720 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
5723 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
5724 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5726 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
5727 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5729 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
5730 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
5731 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5733 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
5734 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
5737 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
5738 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5740 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
5741 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
5743 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
5744 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
5745 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
5749 <p>A larger list is available from
5750 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
5751 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
5753 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
5754 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
5755 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
5756 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
5757 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
5758 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
5759 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
5760 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
5761 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
5762 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5763 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
5769 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
5774 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5778 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi
</a>
5784 <p>I was introduced to the
5785 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
5786 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5787 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5788 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
5789 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5790 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
5791 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5792 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
5794 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5795 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5796 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5797 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5798 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
5800 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5801 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5802 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5803 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5804 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
5805 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
5806 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
5807 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5808 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
5809 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
5810 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5811 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5812 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5813 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5814 missing in Debian).
</p>
5816 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5818 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
5819 and a administrative web interface
5820 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
5821 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5822 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
5823 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5824 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
5825 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5826 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
5827 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5828 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
5829 this is really working yet, see
5830 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5831 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
5832 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5833 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5834 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5835 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5836 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
5838 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5839 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5842 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
5846 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
5847 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
5848 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5849 to the Debian installer:
<p>
5850 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
5852 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5855 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5856 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
5860 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
5864 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
5865 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
5866 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
5868 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
5870 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
5872 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5875 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5876 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5878 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
5882 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5883 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5884 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5885 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
5886 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
5888 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5889 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5890 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5891 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
5893 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5894 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
5895 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
5896 irc.debian.org and the
5897 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
5898 mailing list</a>.</p>
5900 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5901 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5902 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5903 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5904 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
5905 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5911 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox
">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
5916 <div class="padding
"></div>
5920 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html
">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
5926 <p>Earlier, I reported about
5927 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">my
5928 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>. Friday I was
5929 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
5930 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5931 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5932 currently on the disk.</p>
5934 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5935 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=
3472&DwnldID=
18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+
520+Series+(
180GB%
2c+
2.5in+SATA+
6Gb%
2fs%
2c+
25nm%
2c+MLC)&lang=eng
">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
5936 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5937 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5938 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5939 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
5940 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5941 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
5942 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5943 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
5944 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
5945 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5946 the broken disks.</p>
5952 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>.
5957 <div class="padding
"></div>
5961 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
5967 <p>Today I switched to
5968 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">my
5969 new laptop</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
5970 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5971 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html
">180
5972 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5973 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5974 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5975 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5976 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
5977 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5978 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5979 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5980 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5981 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5982 station from now on.</p>
5984 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5985 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5986 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
5987 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5988 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5989 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning. The
5990 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git
">source
5991 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5992 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5993 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5994 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5995 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5997 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5998 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
5999 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
6000 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
6001 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
6002 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
6003 parameters are tuned:</p>
6007 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
6008 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
6010 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
6011 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
6012 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
6014 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
6017 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
6020 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
6022 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
6025 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
6026 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
6030 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
6031 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
6032 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
6033 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
6034 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
6035 from getting the data on the disk (see
6036 <a href="http://xkcd.com/
538/
">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
6037 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
6038 right thing to do.</p>
6040 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
6041 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
6042 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
6044 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
6045 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
6046 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
6047 instead of during my work.</p>
6049 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
6050 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
6052 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
6053 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
6054 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
6056 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
6059 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
6060 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
6061 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
6062 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
6063 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
6064 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
6071 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>.
6076 <div class="padding
"></div>
6080 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html
">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
6086 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
6087 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">the
6088 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
6089 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
6090 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
6091 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/
">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
6092 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
6093 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
6095 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
6096 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
6097 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
6098 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
6099 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
6100 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
6101 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
6102 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
6103 lock up when I download a new
6104 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
6105 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
6106 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
6108 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6109 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
6110 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6111 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
6112 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
6113 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
6115 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
6116 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
6117 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
6118 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
6119 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
6120 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
6122 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
6123 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
6124 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
6125 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
6132 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>.
6137 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6141 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July
13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo
</a>
6147 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
6148 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
6149 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
6150 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
6151 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6152 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
6155 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
6156 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
6157 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
6158 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
6159 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
6165 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>.
6170 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6174 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?
</a>
6180 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
6181 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
6182 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
6183 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
6184 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
6186 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
6187 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
6188 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
6189 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
6192 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6193 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6194 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
6195 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
6196 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6197 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
6198 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
6199 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
6200 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
6202 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
6203 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
6204 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
6205 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
6206 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
6207 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
6208 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
6210 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
6211 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
6213 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
6214 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
6215 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
6216 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
6217 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
6218 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
6219 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
6220 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
6221 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
6222 kernel developers as
6223 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
6224 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
6225 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
6226 Lenovo forums, both for
6227 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
6228 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
6229 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
6230 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
6231 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
6232 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
6233 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
6235 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
6236 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
6237 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
6239 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
6240 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
6241 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
6242 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
6243 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
6244 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
6251 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>.
6256 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6260 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230
</a>
6266 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
6267 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
6268 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
6269 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
6270 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
6271 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
6272 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
6273 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
6274 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
6276 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6277 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6278 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
6279 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
6280 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6281 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
6282 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
6284 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
6285 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
6286 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
6287 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
6288 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
6289 new laptop now. :)
</p>
6291 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
6297 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>.
6302 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6306 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram
0.4)
</a>
6312 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6313 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6314 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6315 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
6316 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6317 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
6318 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
6319 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6320 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6321 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6322 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
6325 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6326 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6327 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6328 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6329 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6330 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6333 Preconfiguring packages ...
6334 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6335 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6336 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6337 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
6341 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6342 printed instead:
</p>
6345 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6346 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
6350 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6351 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
6353 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
6354 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
6355 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
6356 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
6357 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
6358 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
6359 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
6360 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
6363 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
6364 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
6365 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
6366 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
6367 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
6368 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
6374 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
6379 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6383 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video
</a>
6389 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
6390 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
6391 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
6392 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
6393 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
6394 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
6395 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
6396 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
6397 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
6398 i915 driver used by the
6399 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6400 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
6402 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
6403 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
6404 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
6405 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
6406 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
6409 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
6410 update-initramfs -u -k all
6413 <p>Since March
2012 there is
6414 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
6415 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
6416 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
6417 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
6418 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
6419 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
6420 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
6421 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
6422 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
6425 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
6426 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
6429 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
6430 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
6431 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
6432 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
6433 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
6434 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
6435 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
6436 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
6438 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
6439 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
6440 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
6441 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
6442 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
6443 Capabilities: <access denied>
6444 Kernel driver in use: i915
6447 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
6450 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
6452 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
6453 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
6458 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
6459 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
6460 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
6461 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
6462 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
6463 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
6465 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
6466 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
6467 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
6468 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
6469 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
6470 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
6472 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
6473 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
6474 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
6475 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
6476 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
6477 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
6478 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
6479 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
6480 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
6481 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
6482 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
6483 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
6485 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
6486 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
6487 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
6488 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
6495 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>.
6500 <div class="padding
"></div>
6504 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html
">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
6510 <p>Two days ago, I asked
6511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html
">how
6512 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
6513 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
6514 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
6517 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
6518 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
6519 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
6520 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
6523 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
6524 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
6525 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
6526 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
6527 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
6528 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
6529 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
6530 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
6533 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
6534 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
6535 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
6536 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
6537 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
6538 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
6539 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
6540 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
6543 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
6544 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
6545 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
6548 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
6549 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
6555 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>.
6560 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6564 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows
8?
</a>
6570 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
6571 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
6572 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
6573 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
6574 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
6575 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
6577 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
6578 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
6579 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
6580 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
6581 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
6582 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
6583 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
6584 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
6585 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
6586 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
6588 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
6589 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6590 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
6591 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
6592 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
6593 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
6595 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
6596 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
6603 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>.
6608 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6612 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation
</a>
6618 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
6619 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
6620 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
6621 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
6622 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
6623 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
6624 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
6625 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
6626 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
6627 donate some money
</a>.
6629 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
6630 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
6631 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
6632 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
6633 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
6636 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless
<a/>
6637 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
6638 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
6639 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
6643 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
6644 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
6645 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
6646 our configuration.
</li>
6647 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
6648 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
6649 according to the profile specified in the config above,
6650 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
6651 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
6652 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
6653 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
6657 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
6658 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
6659 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
6660 the needed packages.
</p>
6662 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
6663 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
6664 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
6665 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
6666 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
6667 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
6669 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
6670 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
6671 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
6674 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
6678 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
6679 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
6680 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
6687 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>.
6692 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6696 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?
</a>
6703 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
6704 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
6705 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6706 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
6707 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
6708 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
6709 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
6710 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
6711 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6712 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
6713 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
6714 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
6717 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos
</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++
</td></tr>
6718 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
6719 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt
</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX
</td></tr>
6720 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
6721 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
6722 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
6723 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt
</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
</td></tr>
6724 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer
</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT
</td></tr>
6725 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch
</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages
8 and up
</td></tr>
6726 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
6729 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6730 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
6731 available in experimental.
</p>
6733 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6734 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6735 for LEGO designers.
</p>
6741 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
6746 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6750 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy
</a>
6756 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6757 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
6758 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
6759 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
6762 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
6763 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
6764 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
6765 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
6766 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
6767 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
6768 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
6769 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
6770 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
6771 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
6774 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
6775 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
6776 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
6777 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
6784 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>.
6789 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6793 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram
0.2 finally in the Debian archive
</a>
6799 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
6800 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
6801 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
6802 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
6804 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
6805 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
6806 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
6807 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
6808 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
6815 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
6820 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6824 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)
</a>
6831 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
6832 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
6833 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
6834 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6835 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
6836 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
6839 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
6840 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
6841 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
6842 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
6843 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
6844 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
6845 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
6846 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
6848 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
6849 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
6850 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
6851 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
6854 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6855 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6856 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
6862 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>.
6867 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6871 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
6878 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
6879 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
6880 pluggable hardware devices, which I
6881 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
6882 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
6883 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
6884 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
6885 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
6886 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
6887 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
6888 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
6889 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
6890 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
6893 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
6894 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
6897 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
6898 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
6899 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
6900 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
6902 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
6903 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
6904 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
6905 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
6908 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
6909 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
6912 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
6913 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
6919 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
6924 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6928 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian
</a>
6934 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
6935 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
6936 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
6937 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
6939 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
6940 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
6941 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
6942 autostart script.
</p>
6944 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
6948 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
6949 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
6951 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
6952 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
6955 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
6956 the APT database, a database
6957 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
6958 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
6960 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
6961 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
6962 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
6963 package or packages.
</li>
6965 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
6966 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
6968 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
6969 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
6973 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
6974 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
6975 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
6976 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
6978 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
6979 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
6980 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
6981 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
6982 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
6984 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6985 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
6986 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6987 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6988 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6989 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6990 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6991 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
6993 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6994 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6996 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6997 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
6998 devscripts package.
</p>
7000 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
7001 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
7002 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
7003 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
7004 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
7010 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
7015 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7019 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service
</a>
7025 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
7026 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
7027 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
7028 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
7029 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
7030 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
7031 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
7032 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
7033 not a durable solution.
7035 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
7036 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
7040 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
7042 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
7043 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
7044 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
7045 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
7046 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
7047 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
7048 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
7049 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
7051 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
7052 X.org packages.
</li>
7053 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
7058 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
7059 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
7060 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
7061 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
7062 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
7063 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
7064 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
7065 still be useful.
</p>
7067 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
7068 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
7069 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
7070 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
7071 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
7072 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
7078 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>.
7083 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7087 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type
</a>
7093 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
7094 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
7095 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
7096 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
7097 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
7098 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
7099 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
7105 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7110 version = pkg.candidate
7112 version = pkg.installed
7115 record = version.record
7116 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
7118 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
7119 for t in mime_types:
7120 t = t.rstrip().strip()
7122 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
7124 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
7125 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
7126 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
7127 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
7128 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7132 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
7135 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
7136 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
7138 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
7139 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
7140 browser-plugin-gnash
7144 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
7145 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
7146 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
7147 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
7149 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
7150 request for icweasel support for this feature is
7151 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
7152 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
7153 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
7154 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
7160 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>.
7165 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7169 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?
</a>
7175 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
7176 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
7177 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
7178 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
7179 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
7180 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
7181 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
7182 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
7184 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
7185 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
7186 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
7188 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
7189 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
7190 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
7191 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
7192 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
7194 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
7198 ----- -----------------------
7214 18 application/x-ogg
7221 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
7225 ----- -----------------------
7241 18 application/x-ogg
7248 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
7252 ----- -----------------------
7269 18 application/x-ogg
7275 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
7276 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
7277 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
7280 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
7281 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
7287 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>.
7292 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7296 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware
</a>
7302 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
7303 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
7304 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
7305 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
7306 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
7307 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
7308 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
7309 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
7310 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
7313 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
7314 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
7315 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
7319 Package: package-name
7320 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
7323 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
7324 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
7326 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
7327 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
7331 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
7334 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
7335 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
7338 Package: pcmciautils
7339 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
7342 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
7343 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
7346 Package: colorhug-client
7347 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
7350 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
7351 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
7352 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
7354 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
7355 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
7356 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
7357 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
7358 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
7359 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
7360 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
7363 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
7364 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
7365 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
7366 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
7368 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
7369 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
7370 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
7371 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
7373 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
7374 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
7377 % ./hw-support-lookup
7378 <br>yubikey-personalization
7382 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
7383 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
7386 % ./hw-support-lookup
7391 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
7392 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
7393 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
7395 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
7396 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
7397 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
7398 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
7399 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
7400 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
7401 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
7404 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7405 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7406 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7407 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
7413 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
7418 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7422 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware
</a>
7428 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
7429 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
7430 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
7431 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
7433 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7434 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
7436 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
7438 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
7439 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
7440 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
7441 <URL:
<a href=
"http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/
26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device
</a> >,
7442 <URL:
<a href=
"http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c
</a> > and
7443 <URL:
<a href=
"http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup
</a> >.
7445 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
7446 this shell script:
</p>
7449 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
7452 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
7456 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
7457 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
7458 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
7462 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
7464 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
7465 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
7468 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
7471 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
7476 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
7477 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
7479 sc
00 (bus subclass)
7483 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
7484 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
7485 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
7486 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
7488 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
7491 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
7493 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
7494 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
7497 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
7500 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
7503 v
1D6B (device vendor)
7504 p
0001 (device product)
7506 dc
09 (device class)
7507 dsc
00 (device subclass)
7508 dp
00 (device protocol)
7509 ic
09 (interface class)
7510 isc
00 (interface subclass)
7511 ip
00 (interface protocol)
7514 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
7515 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
7516 these alias entries show up:
</p>
7519 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
7520 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
7521 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
7522 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
7525 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
7526 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
7527 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
7529 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
7531 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
7532 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
7535 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7538 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
7540 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
7542 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
7543 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
7544 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
7547 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
7550 <p>The values present are
</p>
7553 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
7554 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
7555 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
7556 svn IBM (system vendor)
7557 pn
2371H4G (product name)
7558 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
7559 rvn IBM (board vendor)
7560 rn
2371H4G (board name)
7561 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
7562 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
7563 ct
10 (chassis type)
7564 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
7567 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
7568 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
7572 4 Low Profile Desktop
7585 17 Main Server Chassis
7586 18 Expansion Chassis
7588 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
7589 21 Peripheral Chassis
7591 23 Rack Mount Chassis
7600 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
7601 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
7602 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
7604 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
7606 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
7610 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
7613 <p>The values present are
</p>
7622 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
7623 the valid values are.
</p>
7625 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
7627 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
7628 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
7629 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
7630 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
7631 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
7632 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
7633 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
7635 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
7637 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
7638 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
7641 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
7643 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
7647 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
7648 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
7652 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
7654 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
7656 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
7657 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
7658 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
7659 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
7660 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7661 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
7662 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
7663 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
7667 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7668 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7669 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7670 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
7672 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
7673 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
7674 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
7680 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
7685 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7689 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint
</a>
7695 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
7696 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
7697 Launcher and updated the Debian package
7698 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
7699 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
7700 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
7701 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
7702 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
7703 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
7704 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
7705 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
7706 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
7707 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
7708 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
7709 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
7710 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
7711 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
7712 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
7718 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram
">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>.
7723 <div class="padding
"></div>
7727 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html
">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
7733 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
7734 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
7735 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
7736 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
7737 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
7738 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
7739 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
7740 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
7741 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
7742 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
7743 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
7745 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
7746 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
7747 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
7752 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
7753 starting when a user log in.</li>
7755 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
7756 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
7758 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
7759 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
7762 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
7763 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
7767 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
7768 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
7769 discover database to find packages and
7770 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
7773 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
7774 draft package is now checked into
7775 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
7776 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
7777 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
7778 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
7779 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
7780 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
7781 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
7782 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
7783 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
7784 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
7785 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
7786 because of the freeze).</p>
7788 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
7789 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
7792 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
7794 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
7795 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
7796 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
7798 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
7799 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
7800 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
7801 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
7802 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
7803 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
7804 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
7806 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
7807 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
7808 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
7809 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
7810 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
7811 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
7812 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
7813 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
7814 not be installed?
</p>
7816 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
7817 please send me an email. :)
</p>
7823 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
7828 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7832 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian
</a>
7838 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7839 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
7840 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7841 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7842 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
7843 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7844 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
7845 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7846 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
7847 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
7849 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
7850 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
7851 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
7857 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
7862 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7866 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version
0.7.2-
2 to Debian Squeeze
</a>
7872 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7873 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
7875 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
7876 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7877 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7878 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7879 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
7880 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
7881 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7882 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
7883 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7886 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7887 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7888 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
7891 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7893 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7894 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7897 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
7898 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7899 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
7900 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
7901 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
7902 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7903 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7904 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7905 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
7907 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7908 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7909 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
7915 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>.
7920 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7924 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
7930 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
7931 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
7932 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7933 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
7934 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
7935 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
7936 is now maintained by a
7937 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
7938 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
7939 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7940 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7941 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7942 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7943 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
7944 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7945 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7947 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7948 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7951 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7952 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7953 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7954 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7955 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7956 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7957 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7958 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
7959 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7960 new version to unstable.
7962 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7963 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
7964 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7965 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7966 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7967 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7968 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7969 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
7970 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7971 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7972 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
7973 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7974 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7975 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
7976 have not tested them.
</p>
7979 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7980 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7981 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7982 years ago, as can be
7983 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7984 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
7985 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7986 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7987 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
7988 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7989 the same address as last time,
7990 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
7996 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>.
8001 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8005 <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>
8012 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
8013 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8014 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8015 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
8016 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
8018 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8019 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8020 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8021 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
8023 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8024 PostScript formats at
8025 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
8026 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
8032 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>.
8037 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8041 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med
19-årsdagen, Debian!
</a>
8048 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet
19
8049 år
</a>. Jeg har fulgt det de siste
12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
8050 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!
</p>
8056 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
8061 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8065 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
8071 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8072 <a href=
"http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø
</a>, I started
8073 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
8074 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8075 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8076 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
8077 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8078 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8079 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
8080 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
8081 missing in my book.
</p>
8083 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8084 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8085 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8086 Especially now that
<a href=
"http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8087 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
8088 out
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8089 Computer Science Songbook
</a>.
8095 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>.
8100 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8104 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
8110 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
8111 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
8112 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
8113 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
8114 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
8115 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
8116 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
8117 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
8118 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
8119 the tools to do so.
</p>
8121 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
8122 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
8123 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
8124 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
8126 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
8127 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
8128 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
8129 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
8130 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
8131 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
8132 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
8133 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
8135 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
8136 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
8137 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
8143 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
8145 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
8147 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
8149 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
8150 eval "use $module;";
8152 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
8153 system("yum install -y $pkg");
8154 eval "use $module;";
8158 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
8164 sub run_firmware_script {
8165 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
8167 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
8170 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
8172 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
8173 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
8175 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
8179 sub run_firmware_scripts {
8180 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
8181 # Run firmware packages
8182 for my $dir (@dirs) {
8183 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
8184 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
8185 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
8186 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
8187 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
8195 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
8196 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
8201 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
8204 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
8206 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
8207 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
8209 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
8213 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
8214 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
8215 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
8216 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
8219 for my $url (@paths) {
8220 fetch_dell_fw($url);
8222 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
8224 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
8225 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
8229 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
8230 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
8236 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
8240 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
8241 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
8242 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
8243 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
8244 my $filename = shift;
8246 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
8248 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
8250 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
8252 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
8254 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
8255 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
8256 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
8258 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
8259 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
8261 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
8263 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
8265 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
8268 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
8269 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
8271 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
8272 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
8274 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
8275 for my $path (@paths) {
8276 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
8277 push(@paths, $cpath);
8285 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
8286 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
8287 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
8288 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
8295 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>.
8300 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8304 <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>
8310 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
8311 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
8312 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
8313 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
8314 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
8315 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
8316 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
8317 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
8318 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
8321 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
8322 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
8323 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
8326 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
8327 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
8328 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
8329 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
8330 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
8331 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
8332 hard to explain.
</p>
8334 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
8335 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
8336 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
8337 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
8338 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
8339 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
8340 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
8341 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
8342 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
8343 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
8344 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
8347 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
8348 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
8349 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
8350 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
8351 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
8352 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
8353 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
8354 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
8355 after visiting single user mode.</p>
8357 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
8358 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
8359 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
8360 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
8361 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
8362 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
8363 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
8364 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
8366 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
8367 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
8368 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
8374 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>.
8379 <div class="padding
"></div>
8383 <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>
8389 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
8390 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
8391 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
8392 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
8393 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
8394 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
8395 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
8396 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
8397 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
8398 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
8399 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
8400 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
8401 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
8403 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
8404 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
8405 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
8406 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
8407 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
8408 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
8409 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
8410 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
8411 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
8413 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
8414 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
8415 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
8418 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
8419 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
8420 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
8421 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
8422 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
8423 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
8424 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
8425 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
8426 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
8427 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
8428 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
8429 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
8430 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
8431 find time to push this forward.</p>
8437 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>.
8442 <div class="padding
"></div>
8446 <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>
8452 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
8453 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
8454 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
8455 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
8458 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
8459 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
8460 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
8464 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
8465 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
8466 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
8467 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
8468 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
8469 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
8470 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
8473 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
8474 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
8475 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
8476 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
8477 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
8478 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
8479 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
8480 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
8481 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
8482 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
8483 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
8484 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
8485 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
8487 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
8488 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
8489 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
8490 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
8491 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
8492 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
8493 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
8494 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
8495 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
8496 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
8498 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
8499 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
8500 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
8501 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
8502 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
8503 latter behaviour.</li>
8507 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
8508 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
8509 it do not matter much.</p>
8511 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
8512 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
8513 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
8519 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/h264
">h264</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>.
8524 <div class="padding
"></div>
8528 <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>
8534 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
8535 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
8536 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
8537 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
8538 security support for a few years.</p>
8540 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
8541 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
8542 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
8543 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
8544 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
8545 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
8546 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
8547 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
8548 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
8549 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
8550 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
8551 easier in the future.</p>
8553 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
8554 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
8555 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
8556 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
8557 do not have time for.</p>
8563 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>.
8568 <div class="padding
"></div>
8572 <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>
8578 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
8579 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
8580 update in English.</p>
8582 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
8583 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
8584 of the British service
8585 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
8586 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
8587 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
8588 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
8589 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
8590 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
8591 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
8592 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
8593 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
8594 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
8595 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
8596 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
8597 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
8599 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
8600 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
8601 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
8602 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
8603 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
8604 public infrastructure.</p>
8606 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
8613 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>.
8618 <div class="padding
"></div>
8622 <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>
8628 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
8629 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
8630 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
8631 available on the Internet, and check our locally
8632 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
8633 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
8634 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
8635 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
8636 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
8637 out which security holes were present in our free software
8640 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
8641 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
8642 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
8643 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
8644 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
8645 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
8646 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
8647 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
8648 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
8649 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
8650 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
8651 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
8652 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
8653 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
8654 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
8655 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
8657 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
8658 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
8659 check out, one could look up
8660 <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
8661 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
8662 The most recent one is
8663 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
8664 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
8665 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
8667 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
8668 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
8669 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
8670 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
8671 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
8672 security issues out.</p>
8674 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
8675 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
8676 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
8678 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
8679 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
8680 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
8682 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
8683 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
8684 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
8685 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
8686 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
8687 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
8688 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
8689 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
8690 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
8691 established soon.</p>
8693 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
8694 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
8695 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
8696 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
8697 for their packages.</p>
8703 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>.
8708 <div class="padding
"></div>
8712 <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>
8719 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
8720 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
8721 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
8722 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
8723 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
8724 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
8725 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
8726 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
8727 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
8728 one of my machines like this:</p>
8732 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
8735 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
8744 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
8745 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
8748 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
8749 echo loaded pci modules:
8751 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
8752 for address in * ; do
8753 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8754 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8755 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8756 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
8757 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
8767 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
8771 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
8772 echo loaded usb modules:
8774 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
8775 for address in * ; do
8776 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8777 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8778 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8779 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
8780 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
8792 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
8799 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>.
8804 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8808 <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>
8814 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
8815 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
8816 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
8817 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
8818 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
8819 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
8820 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
8821 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
8824 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
8825 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
8826 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8827 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
8828 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8829 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8830 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8831 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
8833 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
8834 I perform on a new model.
</p>
8838 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8839 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
8840 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
8842 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
8843 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
8845 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
8846 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8847 reported by the program.
</li>
8849 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8850 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
8851 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8852 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
8853 normally test this by playing
8854 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8855 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
8857 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
8858 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
8860 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8861 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
8863 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
8864 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
8866 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8867 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
8870 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
8871 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8874 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
8875 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8878 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8879 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8880 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
8881 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8884 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8885 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8886 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8891 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8892 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
8893 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
8894 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8895 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
8896 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
8897 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8898 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
8904 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>.
8909 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8913 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
8919 <p>As I continue to explore
8920 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
8921 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8922 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
8924 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8925 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8926 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8927 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8928 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8929 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
8930 all transactions. There I can see that my address
8931 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
8932 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
8933 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
8934 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
8935 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
8936 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
8937 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8938 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8939 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8940 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
8941 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8942 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8943 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
8945 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8946 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8947 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8948 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8949 If the Skolelinux foundation
8950 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8951 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8952 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8953 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8954 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
8955 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
8956 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8957 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
8959 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8960 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
8961 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8962 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8963 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
8964 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8965 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
8966 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8967 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8968 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8969 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
8970 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8971 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8972 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8975 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8976 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8977 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8978 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
8979 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8980 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8981 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8982 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
8984 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
8985 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
8986 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8987 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8990 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
8991 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8992 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8993 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
8994 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
9000 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>.
9005 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9009 <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>
9015 <p>With this weeks lawless
9016 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
9017 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
9018 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
9019 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
9020 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
9022 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
9023 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
9024 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
9025 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
9026 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
9027 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
9028 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
9030 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
9031 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
9032 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
9033 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
9034 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
9035 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
9036 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
9037 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
9038 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
9039 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
9041 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
9042 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
9043 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
9044 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
9045 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
9046 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
9048 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
9049 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
9050 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
9051 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
9053 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
9054 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
9055 donations to the address
9056 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
9062 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>.
9067 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9071 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
9077 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
9078 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
9079 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
9080 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
9081 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
9082 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
9083 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
9084 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
9086 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
9087 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9088 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
9089 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
9090 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
9091 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
9092 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
9093 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
9094 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
9095 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
9096 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
9098 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
9099 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
9100 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
9101 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
9102 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
9103 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
9104 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
9105 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
9106 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
9107 what is going on.
</p>
9113 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>.
9118 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9122 <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>
9128 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
9129 upgrade testing of the
9130 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9131 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
9132 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
9133 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
9135 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
9137 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
9144 browser-plugin-gnash
9151 freedesktop-sound-theme
9153 gconf-defaults-service
9168 gnome-desktop-environment
9172 gnome-session-canberra
9177 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9183 libapache2-mod-dnssd
9186 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
9189 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
9190 libboost-python1.42
.0
9191 libboost-thread1.42
.0
9193 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
9195 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
9202 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9217 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
9222 libgtksourceview2.0-common
9223 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9224 libmono-addins0.2-cil
9225 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
9226 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9227 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
9228 libmono-posix2.0-cil
9229 libmono-security2.0-cil
9230 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9231 libmono-system2.0-cil
9234 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
9235 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
9245 libtelepathy-farsight0
9254 nautilus-sendto-empathy
9258 python-aptdaemon-gtk
9260 python-beautifulsoup
9275 python-gtksourceview2
9286 python-pkg-resources
9293 python-twisted-conch
9299 python-zope.interface
9304 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9311 system-config-printer-udev
9313 telepathy-mission-control-
5
9326 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
9334 fast-user-switch-applet
9353 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
9355 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
9361 system-config-printer
9368 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
9371 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9374 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
9380 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
9382 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
9388 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
9395 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
9411 kdeartwork-emoticons
9413 kdeartwork-theme-icon
9417 kdebase-workspace-bin
9418 kdebase-workspace-data
9432 kscreensaver-xsavers
9447 plasma-dataengines-workspace
9449 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
9450 plasma-runners-addons
9451 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
9452 plasma-scriptengine-python
9453 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
9454 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
9455 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
9456 plasma-scriptengines
9457 plasma-wallpapers-addons
9458 plasma-widget-folderview
9459 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9463 xscreensaver-data-extra
9465 xscreensaver-gl-extra
9466 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9469 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
9473 google-gadgets-common
9491 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
9496 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
9505 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
9507 libplasmagenericshell4
9521 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
9522 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
9524 libsmokektexteditor3
9532 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
9538 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
9550 plasma-dataengines-addons
9551 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
9552 plasma-widget-lancelot
9553 plasma-widgets-addons
9554 plasma-widgets-workspace
9558 update-notifier-common
9561 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
9562 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
9563 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
9564 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
9570 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>.
9575 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9579 <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>
9585 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
9586 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
9587 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
9588 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
9589 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
9590 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
9591 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
9592 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
9593 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
9596 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
9597 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
9598 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
9599 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
9600 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
9601 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
9607 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
9612 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
9613 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
9619 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
9620 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
9624 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
9625 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
9626 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
9627 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
9630 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
9631 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
9633 parted $img mklabel msdos
9634 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
9635 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
9636 parted $img set
1 boot on
9639 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
9640 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
9642 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
9643 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
9644 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
9646 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
9647 losetup -d /dev/loop0
9650 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
9651 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
9653 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
9654 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
9655 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
9656 seem to work just fine.
</p>
9662 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>.
9667 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9671 <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>
9677 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
9678 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9679 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
9680 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
9682 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
9683 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
9684 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
9686 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
9688 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
9691 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
9692 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
9693 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
9694 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
9695 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
9696 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
9697 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
9698 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
9699 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
9700 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
9701 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9702 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9703 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
9704 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
9705 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
9706 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
9707 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
9708 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
9709 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9710 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
9711 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
9712 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9713 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
9714 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
9715 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
9716 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9717 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9718 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
9719 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9720 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
9721 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
9722 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9723 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
9724 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
9725 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
9726 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
9727 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
9728 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
9729 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
9730 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
9731 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
9732 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
9733 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
9734 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
9735 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
9736 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
9737 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
9738 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
9739 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
9740 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
9741 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
9742 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
9743 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9744 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
9745 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
9746 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
9747 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
9748 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
9752 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
9755 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
9756 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
9757 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
9758 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
9759 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
9760 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
9761 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
9762 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
9763 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
9764 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
9765 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
9766 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9767 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
9768 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
9769 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
9770 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
9771 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9772 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
9773 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
9774 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
9775 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
9776 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
9777 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
9778 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
9779 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
9780 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
9781 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
9782 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
9783 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
9786 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
9789 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9792 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
9798 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
9800 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
9803 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
9804 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9805 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
9806 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
9807 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
9808 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
9809 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9810 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
9811 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
9812 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9813 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
9814 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
9815 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
9816 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
9817 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
9818 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
9819 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
9820 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
9821 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
9822 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
9823 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
9824 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
9825 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9826 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9827 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9828 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9829 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9830 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9831 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9835 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
9838 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9839 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9840 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9841 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9842 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9843 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9844 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9845 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9846 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9847 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9848 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9849 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9850 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9851 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9852 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9853 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9854 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
9855 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9856 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9857 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
9858 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9859 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9860 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9861 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9862 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9863 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9864 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9865 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
9866 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
9867 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9868 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9869 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9870 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9873 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
9876 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9877 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9878 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9879 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9880 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9881 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9882 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9885 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
9888 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9895 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>.
9900 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9904 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
9911 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9912 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
9913 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
9914 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9915 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9916 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9917 releases out more often.
</p>
9919 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9920 I have considered setting up a
<a
9921 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
9922 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9923 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
9924 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
9925 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9926 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9927 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9928 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
9929 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9930 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9931 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
9932 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
9938 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>.
9943 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9947 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
9953 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9955 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
9957 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9958 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
9964 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>.
9969 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9973 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
9979 <p>Some updates.
</p>
9981 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
9982 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
9983 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
9984 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9985 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
9988 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9989 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9990 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9992 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
9993 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
9994 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9995 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9996 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9997 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
9999 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
10000 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
10001 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
10002 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
10003 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
10004 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
10005 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
10006 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
10007 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
10008 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
10014 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>.
10019 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10021 <div class=
"entry">
10022 <div class=
"title">
10023 <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>
10029 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
10030 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
10031 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
10032 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
10033 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
10034 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
10037 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
10038 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
10039 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
10040 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
10041 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10042 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
10043 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
10044 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
10045 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
10047 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
10048 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
10049 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
10050 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
10051 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
10052 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
10053 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
10054 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
10055 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
10056 pages they want to visit.
</p>
10058 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
10059 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
10060 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
10061 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
10062 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
10063 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
10064 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
10065 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
10066 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
10067 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
10068 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
10074 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>.
10079 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10081 <div class=
"entry">
10082 <div class=
"title">
10083 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
10089 <p>I discovered this while doing
10090 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
10091 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
10092 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
10093 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
10094 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
10096 <p>An example is from todays
10097 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
10098 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
10099 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
10100 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
10101 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
10102 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
10103 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
10105 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
10108 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
10109 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
10110 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
10111 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
10112 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
10113 </pre></blockquote>
10115 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
10116 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
10117 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
10118 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
10119 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
10120 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
10121 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
10122 of dependency loops.
</p>
10125 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10126 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
10128 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10129 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
10131 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10132 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
10133 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
10134 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10135 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10142 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>.
10147 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10149 <div class=
"entry">
10150 <div class=
"title">
10151 <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>
10158 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
10160 <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
10162 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10163 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
10165 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10166 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10167 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
10168 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
10170 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10171 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10172 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
10174 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
10176 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
10177 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10180 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10181 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10182 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
10183 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10184 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10185 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
10187 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10188 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10189 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
10190 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
10191 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
10192 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
10193 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10194 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10195 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10196 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10197 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10198 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
10199 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10200 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10201 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
10202 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
10205 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10206 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10207 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10208 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10209 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10210 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10211 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10213 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10214 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10215 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
10216 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10217 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10218 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10219 </pre></blockquote>
10221 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10222 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10223 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
10224 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10228 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10230 objectclass: dnsdomain
10231 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10234 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10236 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10238 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10239 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10241 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10242 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10243 </pre></blockquote>
10245 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
10246 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
10247 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
10248 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10249 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10250 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10251 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
10252 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
10253 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10254 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10255 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10258 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10262 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10263 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10264 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10265 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10266 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10267 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10269 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10270 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10271 </pre></blockquote>
10273 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10274 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10275 reverse lookups.
</p>
10277 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10278 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10279 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
10280 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
10282 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
10283 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
10284 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
10286 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10287 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10288 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
10289 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10290 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
10292 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10293 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10294 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10295 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10296 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
10298 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10299 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10300 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10301 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10302 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10303 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
10306 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
10309 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10310 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10311 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10312 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10313 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10315 </pre></blockquote>
10317 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10318 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10319 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10320 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10321 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10322 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
10324 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
10326 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10327 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
10328 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10329 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10330 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
10332 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10333 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10334 stored. These are the relevant entries from
10335 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
10338 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10339 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10340 </pre></blockquote>
10342 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10343 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10344 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
10345 search result is this entry:
</p>
10348 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10351 objectClass: dhcpServer
10352 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10353 </pre></blockquote>
10355 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10356 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
10357 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10358 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10359 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10360 The search result is this entry:
</p>
10363 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10366 objectClass: dhcpService
10367 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10368 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10369 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10370 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10371 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
10372 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
10373 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
10374 </pre></blockquote>
10376 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
10377 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10378 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10379 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10380 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
10381 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
10382 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10383 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10384 related computer objects.
</p>
10386 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10387 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
10388 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10389 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10390 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
10394 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10397 objectClass: dhcpHost
10398 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10399 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10400 </pre></blockquote>
10402 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10403 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10404 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
10405 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10406 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
10407 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10408 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10409 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10410 structural object class.
10412 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
10414 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10415 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
10416 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
10417 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10418 in the configuration.
</p>
10420 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10421 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10422 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10423 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10424 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10427 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10428 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
10432 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10433 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10434 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10435 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10436 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10437 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10438 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10439 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10440 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10441 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10442 </pre></blockquote>
10444 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10445 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10446 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10447 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
10449 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10453 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10456 objectClass: dhcpHost
10457 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10458 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10459 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10460 arecord:
10.11.12.13
10461 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10462 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10463 </pre></blockquote>
10465 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10466 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10467 auxiliary object class.
</p>
10473 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>.
10478 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10480 <div class=
"entry">
10481 <div class=
"title">
10482 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
10488 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10489 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10490 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10491 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10492 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
10494 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10495 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
10497 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10498 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
10499 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10500 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10501 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10502 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
10504 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10505 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10506 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10507 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10508 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
10511 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10512 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10513 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
10517 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10519 objectClass: dhcphost
10520 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10521 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10522 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10523 arecord:
10.11.12.13
10524 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10525 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10527 </pre></blockquote>
10529 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10530 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10531 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
10532 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
10534 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10535 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10536 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10537 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10538 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10539 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10540 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10541 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
10543 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10544 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10550 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>.
10555 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10557 <div class=
"entry">
10558 <div class=
"title">
10559 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
10565 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10566 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10567 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10568 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
10570 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10571 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
10572 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10573 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10576 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10577 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10578 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
10580 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10581 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10582 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
10585 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10587 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10589 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10590 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10591 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10593 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10594 # existence of attribute names.
10596 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10597 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10598 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10600 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10601 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
10603 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
10606 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10608 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10609 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
10610 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10611 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
10612 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
10613 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
10614 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
10615 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10616 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
10617 # bass value on to clients
10618 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
10622 </pre></blockquote>
10624 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10625 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10626 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10627 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10628 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
10630 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10631 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10633 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10634 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
10635 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
10636 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
10637 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
10638 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
10644 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>.
10649 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10651 <div class=
"entry">
10652 <div class=
"title">
10653 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
10660 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
10661 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10662 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
10663 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
10664 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10665 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
10666 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10667 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
10668 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
10669 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
10670 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
10671 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10672 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
10678 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>.
10683 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10685 <div class=
"entry">
10686 <div class=
"title">
10687 <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>
10693 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
10694 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
10695 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
10696 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
10697 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10698 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10699 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
10700 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
10702 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10703 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
10704 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
10705 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10706 publish the difference.
</p>
10708 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
10711 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10712 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
10713 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10714 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10715 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10716 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10717 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10718 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10721 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
10724 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10725 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10726 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
10727 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10728 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
10729 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
10730 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10731 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
10732 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
10733 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
10734 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10735 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
10736 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10737 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
10738 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10739 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
10740 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
10741 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10742 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10743 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10746 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
10749 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10750 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10751 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10752 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10753 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10754 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10755 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10756 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10757 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10758 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10759 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10760 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10761 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10762 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10763 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10764 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10765 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10766 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10767 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10768 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10769 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10772 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
10775 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10776 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10777 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10780 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10781 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10782 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10783 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10784 the difference somewhat.
10790 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>.
10795 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10797 <div class=
"entry">
10798 <div class=
"title">
10799 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
10805 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10806 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10807 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
10808 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10809 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
10810 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10811 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
10812 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10813 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
10814 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
10816 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10817 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10818 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10819 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10822 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
10823 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10824 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
10825 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
10827 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10828 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10830 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10831 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
10832 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10833 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
10834 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
10840 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>.
10845 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10847 <div class=
"entry">
10848 <div class=
"title">
10849 <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>
10856 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
10857 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10858 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10859 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
10861 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10862 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10863 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10864 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
10866 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10867 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10868 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10871 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10873 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
10874 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10875 available today from IETF.
</p>
10878 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
10879 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
10880 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
10881 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10883 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
10885 + SUP top AUXILIARY
10887 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10888 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
10891 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10892 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10893 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
10895 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10896 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10902 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>.
10907 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10909 <div class=
"entry">
10910 <div class=
"title">
10911 <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>
10917 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10918 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
10919 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10920 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10921 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10925 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10926 tasksel --new-install
10927 </pre></blockquote>
10929 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10930 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10931 any output what so ever.
10933 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10934 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10935 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10936 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10937 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10938 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
10942 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10943 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
10945 </pre></blockquote>
10947 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
10948 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10949 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10950 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10951 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10952 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10955 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10956 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10963 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>.
10968 <div class="padding
"></div>
10970 <div class="entry
">
10971 <div class="title
">
10972 <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>
10979 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
10980 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
10981 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
10983 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10984 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
10985 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
10987 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10988 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
10989 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
10990 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
10991 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
10992 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
10993 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
10994 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
10996 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
10997 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
10998 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
10999 too surprising.</p>
11001 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11002 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
11003 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
11004 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11005 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11006 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
11007 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11010 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11011 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11012 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11013 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11014 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11015 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11016 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11017 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11018 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11019 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11020 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11021 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11022 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11023 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11024 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11025 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11026 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11027 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11028 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11029 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11030 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11031 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11032 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11033 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11034 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11035 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11036 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11037 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11038 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11039 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11041 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11043 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11044 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11045 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11046 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11047 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11048 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11049 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11050 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11051 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11052 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11053 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11054 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11055 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11056 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11057 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11058 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11059 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11060 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11061 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11062 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11063 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11064 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11065 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11066 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11067 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11068 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11069 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11070 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11071 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11072 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11073 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11076 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11078 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11079 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11080 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11081 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11082 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11083 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11084 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11085 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11086 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11087 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11088 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11089 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11090 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11091 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11092 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11093 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11094 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11095 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11096 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11097 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11098 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11099 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11100 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11101 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11102 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11103 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11104 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11105 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11107 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11108 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11109 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11110 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11111 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11112 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11113 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11114 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11115 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11116 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11117 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11118 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11119 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11120 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11121 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11122 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11123 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11124 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11125 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11126 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11127 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11128 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11129 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11130 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11131 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11132 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11133 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11134 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11135 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11136 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11137 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11138 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11139 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11140 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11141 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11142 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11143 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11151 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>.
11156 <div class="padding
"></div>
11158 <div class="entry
">
11159 <div class="title
">
11160 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11166 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11167 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
11168 have been discovered and reported in the process
11169 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11170 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
11171 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
11172 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11173 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
11175 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11176 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11177 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11178 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11179 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11180 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
11182 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11183 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11184 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11185 is created. The bug report
11186 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
11187 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11188 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
11189 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11190 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
11191 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
11192 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11193 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11194 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
11195 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11196 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11197 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11198 Debian Squeeze.</p>
11200 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
11201 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
11217 exec
< /dev/null
11219 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11220 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11222 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11223 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11224 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
11228 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11230 umount $tmpdir/proc
11232 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11233 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11234 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11236 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11238 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
11239 # to return the correct answers.
11240 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11241 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11243 # Include the desktop and laptop task
11244 for test in desktop laptop ; do
11245 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
11249 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
11252 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11253 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
11254 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
11255 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
11257 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
11258 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11259 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11260 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
11262 </pre></blockquote>
11264 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
11265 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
11266 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
11267 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
11268 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
11269 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
11271 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
11272 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
11273 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
11274 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
11275 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
11276 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
11277 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
11279 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
11280 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
11281 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
11282 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
11283 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
11290 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>.
11295 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11297 <div class=
"entry">
11298 <div class=
"title">
11299 <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>
11305 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
11306 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
11307 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
11308 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
11309 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
11310 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
11311 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
11313 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11314 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11323 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11325 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11326 </pre></blockquote>
11328 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11332 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
11337 </pre></blockquote>
11339 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11340 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
11341 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
11343 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11344 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11351 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>.
11356 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11358 <div class=
"entry">
11359 <div class=
"title">
11360 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
11367 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
11368 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
11369 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
11370 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
11371 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
11377 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>.
11382 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11384 <div class=
"entry">
11385 <div class=
"title">
11386 <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>
11392 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11393 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11394 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
11395 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11396 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
11399 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11401 Dell Computer Corporation
1
11404 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
11408 </pre></blockquote>
11410 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11411 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
11412 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11413 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
11414 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
11416 <p>A larger list is
11417 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
11418 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11419 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
11420 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11421 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11422 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11429 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>.
11434 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11436 <div class=
"entry">
11437 <div class=
"title">
11438 <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>
11444 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11445 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
11446 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11447 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11450 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11451 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
11452 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11453 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11454 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
11455 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
11457 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11458 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11459 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
11460 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11461 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11462 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11463 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
11464 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
11466 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
11472 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>.
11477 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11479 <div class=
"entry">
11480 <div class=
"title">
11481 <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>
11487 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11488 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11489 issues are known and should be solved:
11493 <li>The wicd package seen to
11494 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
11495 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
11496 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11497 seem to be on the case.
</li>
11499 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
11500 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
11501 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
11502 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
11504 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11505 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11506 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
11507 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11508 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11509 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11510 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11511 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
11515 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11516 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
11517 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11518 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
11520 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11521 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11522 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11523 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11525 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
11531 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>.
11536 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11538 <div class=
"entry">
11539 <div class=
"title">
11540 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
11546 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11547 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
11548 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11549 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
11551 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
11552 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11553 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
11554 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11555 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11556 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11557 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
11558 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11559 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
11560 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11561 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11562 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11563 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11566 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11567 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11568 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11569 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11570 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
11571 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11572 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
11573 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11574 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11575 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11578 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11579 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11580 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11581 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
11582 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11583 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
11585 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11586 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11592 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>.
11597 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11599 <div class=
"entry">
11600 <div class=
"title">
11601 <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>
11607 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11608 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11609 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11610 expected, if I am to believe the
11611 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11612 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11613 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11614 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
11615 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11616 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11619 More information about
11620 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11621 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
11622 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11623 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
11627 </pre></blockquote>
11629 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11630 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11631 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11632 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11638 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>.
11643 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11645 <div class=
"entry">
11646 <div class=
"title">
11647 <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>
11653 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
11654 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
11655 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
11656 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
11657 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
11658 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
11659 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
11660 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
11662 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
11663 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
11664 this on the collector host:
</p>
11667 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
11668 </pre></blockquote>
11670 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
11671 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
11673 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
11674 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
11675 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
11676 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
11683 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>.
11688 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11690 <div class=
"entry">
11691 <div class=
"title">
11692 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
11698 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
11699 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
11701 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
11703 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
11704 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
11705 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
11706 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11707 based boot system. Tollef is
11708 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
11709 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
11710 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11711 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11712 at the moment do not.
</p>
11714 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11715 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11716 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
11717 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11718 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11721 <p>In the mean time, based on the
11722 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11723 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11724 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11725 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11726 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
11727 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11728 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11729 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
11735 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>.
11740 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11742 <div class=
"entry">
11743 <div class=
"title">
11744 <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>
11750 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11751 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11752 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
11753 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11754 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11755 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
11756 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
11759 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11760 </pre></blockquote>
11762 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11763 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11764 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
11765 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
11766 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
11767 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
11768 make this happen.
</p>
11770 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
11771 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
11772 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
11773 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
11774 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
11776 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
11777 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
11778 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
11779 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
11781 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11782 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11783 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11784 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11790 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>.
11795 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11797 <div class=
"entry">
11798 <div class=
"title">
11799 <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>
11805 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version
2.87dsf-
2,
11806 and the upload of insserv version
1.12.0-
10 yesterday, Debian unstable
11807 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
11808 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
11809 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
11810 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
11811 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.
</p>
11813 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
11814 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
11815 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.
</p>
11821 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>.
11826 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11828 <div class=
"entry">
11829 <div class=
"title">
11830 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development
</a>
11836 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11837 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11838 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
11839 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11840 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11841 the package up to date.
</p>
11843 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11844 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About
10 days ago, I made
11845 a new upstream tarball with version number
2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11846 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11847 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11848 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
11849 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11850 upstream project at
<a href=
"http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah
</a>, and continue
11851 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
11852 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11853 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11854 working on the future release.
</p>
11856 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11857 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.
</p>
11863 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>.
11868 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11870 <div class=
"entry">
11871 <div class=
"title">
11872 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker
</a>
11878 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11879 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11880 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
11882 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
11883 gathering
</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
11884 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11885 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11886 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11887 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.
</p>
11889 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11890 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
11895 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.
</li>
11897 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11898 clock is in UTC.
</li>
11900 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11901 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11902 based boot sequencing
</a>, and enable concurrent booting.
</li>
11906 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11907 <a href=
"http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11910 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11911 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut
6 seconds
11912 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
11913 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11914 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11917 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11918 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11919 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11920 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11921 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
11922 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11923 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)
</p>
11929 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>.
11934 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11936 <div class=
"entry">
11937 <div class=
"title">
11938 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand
</a>
11944 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
11945 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
11946 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
11947 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
11949 <a href=
"http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
11950 rapport
</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
11951 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
11952 <a href=
"http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
11953 höftade Sverigesiffror
</a>, oppsummeres slik:
</p>
11956 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att
25 procent av all mjukvara i
11957 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
11958 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
11959 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
11962 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er
<a
11963 href=
"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
11964 piracy figures need a shot of reality
</a> og
<a
11965 href=
"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
11966 Copyright Treaty Work?
</a></p>
11968 <p>Fant lenkene via
<a
11969 href=
"http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
11970 på Slashdot
</a>.
</p>
11976 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>.
11981 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11983 <div class=
"entry">
11984 <div class=
"title">
11985 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med
21% i
2009</a>
11992 <a href=
"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
11993 tall
</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
11994 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
11995 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har
490
11996 (
61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og
196
11997 (
25%) windowstjenere, samt
112 (
14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
11998 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.
</p>
12004 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12009 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12011 <div class=
"entry">
12012 <div class=
"title">
12013 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis
</a>
12019 <p><a href=
"http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
12020 IT melder
</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
12021 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
12022 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
12023 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
12024 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
12025 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
12026 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
12027 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
12028 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
12029 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
12030 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
12031 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
12032 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
12033 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
12034 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
12035 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
12036 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
12037 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
12038 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.
</p>
12040 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
12041 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
12042 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
12043 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
12044 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
12045 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
12046 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
12053 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
12058 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12060 <div class=
"entry">
12061 <div class=
"title">
12062 <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>
12068 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12069 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12070 do not yet know them.
</p>
12072 <p>The first one is
<a href=
"http://valgrind.org/">valgrind
</a>, a
12073 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12074 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12075 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
12076 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
12077 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12078 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12079 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12080 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
12081 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12082 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12084 <p>The second one is
12085 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity
</a> which is
12086 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
12087 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
12088 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12089 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
12090 and the company behind it is running
12091 <a href=
"http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service
</a> for the
12092 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12093 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
12094 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12095 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12096 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
12097 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12098 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.
</p>
12100 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12101 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12102 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12103 surrounded by today.
</p>
12109 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>.
12114 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12116 <div class=
"entry">
12117 <div class=
"title">
12118 <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>
12125 <a href=
"http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
12126 patch is better than a useless patch
</a>. I completely disagree, as a
12127 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12128 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12129 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
12136 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>.
12141 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12143 <div class=
"entry">
12144 <div class=
"title">
12145 <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>
12151 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12152 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
12153 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12154 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12155 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12156 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12157 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12160 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12161 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
12162 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12163 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
12164 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12165 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12166 blocked from doing so.
</p>
12168 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12169 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12170 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
12171 requirements change.
</p>
12173 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
12174 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
12175 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
12181 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>.
12186 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12188 <div class=
"entry">
12189 <div class=
"title">
12190 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
12196 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
12197 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
12198 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
12199 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
12200 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
12201 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
12202 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
12203 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
12204 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
12205 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
12206 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
12207 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
12208 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
12209 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
12216 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>.
12221 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12223 <div class=
"entry">
12224 <div class=
"title">
12225 <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>
12231 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
12232 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
12233 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
12234 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
12235 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
12236 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
12238 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
12239 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
12240 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
12241 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
12242 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
12243 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
12244 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
12245 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
12246 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
12247 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
12248 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
12249 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
12250 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
12252 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
12253 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
12254 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
12255 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
12257 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
12258 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
12260 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
12261 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
12262 new IETF work group?
</p>
12268 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>.
12273 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12275 <div class=
"entry">
12276 <div class=
"title">
12277 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
12283 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
12284 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
12285 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
12286 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
12287 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
12288 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
12289 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
12290 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
12291 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
12292 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
12293 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
12294 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
12300 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
12305 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12307 <div class=
"entry">
12308 <div class=
"title">
12309 <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>
12315 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
12316 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
12317 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
12318 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
12319 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
12320 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
12321 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
12322 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
12324 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
12325 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
12326 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
12327 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
12328 of these cards.
</p>
12334 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>.
12339 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12341 <div class=
"entry">
12342 <div class=
"title">
12343 <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>
12349 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
12350 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
12351 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
12352 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
12353 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
12354 notes are available on
12355 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
12356 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
12357 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
12358 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
12359 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
12360 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
12361 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
12362 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
12363 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
12365 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
12366 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
12372 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>.
12377 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12379 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"debian.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
12390 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (
4)
</a></li>
12392 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (
3)
</a></li>
12394 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (
5)
</a></li>
12396 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (
2)
</a></li>
12398 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
12405 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (
3)
</a></li>
12407 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (
2)
</a></li>
12409 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
12411 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (
8)
</a></li>
12413 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (
8)
</a></li>
12415 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
12417 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (
2)
</a></li>
12419 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (
5)
</a></li>
12421 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (
2)
</a></li>
12423 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (
3)
</a></li>
12425 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (
8)
</a></li>
12427 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (
5)
</a></li>
12434 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
12436 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
12438 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (
1)
</a></li>
12440 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (
4)
</a></li>
12442 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
12444 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (
4)
</a></li>
12446 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (
6)
</a></li>
12448 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (
2)
</a></li>
12450 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (
2)
</a></li>
12452 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
12454 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (
6)
</a></li>
12456 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
12463 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
12465 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (
3)
</a></li>
12467 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (
8)
</a></li>
12469 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
12471 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (
1)
</a></li>
12473 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
12475 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (
2)
</a></li>
12477 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (
2)
</a></li>
12479 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
12481 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (
6)
</a></li>
12483 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
12485 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (
5)
</a></li>
12492 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (
11)
</a></li>
12494 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (
9)
</a></li>
12496 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (
9)
</a></li>
12498 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (
6)
</a></li>
12500 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
12502 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (
10)
</a></li>
12504 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
12506 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
12508 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
12510 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (
7)
</a></li>
12512 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (
9)
</a></li>
12514 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
12521 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
12523 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (
10)
</a></li>
12525 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (
17)
</a></li>
12527 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (
12)
</a></li>
12529 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (
12)
</a></li>
12531 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (
20)
</a></li>
12533 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (
17)
</a></li>
12535 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
12537 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (
9)
</a></li>
12539 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (
17)
</a></li>
12541 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (
10)
</a></li>
12543 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
12550 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (
16)
</a></li>
12552 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
12554 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (
6)
</a></li>
12556 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
12558 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
12560 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
12562 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
12564 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
12566 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (
4)
</a></li>
12568 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
12570 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
12572 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
12579 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
12581 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
12583 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
12585 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
12587 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
12589 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (
14)
</a></li>
12591 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (
12)
</a></li>
12593 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (
13)
</a></li>
12595 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
12597 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
12599 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
12601 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
12608 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
12610 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
12612 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
12)
</a></li>
12614 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
12616 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
12618 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
12620 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (
4)
</a></li>
12622 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
12624 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
12626 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
12628 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
12630 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
12637 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
12639 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
12650 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
12652 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
12654 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
12656 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
12658 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
9)
</a></li>
12660 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
16)
</a></li>
12662 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
12664 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (
2)
</a></li>
12666 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
149)
</a></li>
12668 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
158)
</a></li>
12670 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (
3)
</a></li>
12672 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
10)
</a></li>
12674 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (
16)
</a></li>
12676 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
23)
</a></li>
12678 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
12680 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
348)
</a></li>
12682 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
23)
</a></li>
12684 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
12686 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
29)
</a></li>
12688 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (
9)
</a></li>
12690 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
18)
</a></li>
12692 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (
20)
</a></li>
12694 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
42)
</a></li>
12696 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
15)
</a></li>
12698 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
20)
</a></li>
12700 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
9)
</a></li>
12702 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
8)
</a></li>
12704 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (
2)
</a></li>
12706 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
12708 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (
8)
</a></li>
12710 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
39)
</a></li>
12712 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (
9)
</a></li>
12714 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
290)
</a></li>
12716 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
189)
</a></li>
12718 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
33)
</a></li>
12720 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
12722 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
64)
</a></li>
12724 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
99)
</a></li>
12726 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
12728 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (
1)
</a></li>
12730 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
12732 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
3)
</a></li>
12734 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
10)
</a></li>
12736 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
12738 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
5)
</a></li>
12740 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
12742 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
52)
</a></li>
12744 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
12746 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
5)
</a></li>
12748 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
55)
</a></li>
12750 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
6)
</a></li>
12752 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
11)
</a></li>
12754 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
48)
</a></li>
12756 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
3)
</a></li>
12758 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (
2)
</a></li>
12760 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
8)
</a></li>
12762 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
59)
</a></li>
12764 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
12766 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
40)
</a></li>
12772 <p style=
"text-align: right">
12773 Created by
<a href=
"http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6
</a>
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