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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          9th January 2017
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
  32 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
  33 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
  34 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
  35 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
  36 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
  37 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
  38 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
  39 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
  40 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
  41 this:
  42
  43 <p><pre>
  44 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
  45  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
  46  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
  47  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
  48  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
  49  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
  50  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
  51  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
  52  8  * * *
  53  9  * * *
  54 [...]
  55 </pre></p>
  56
  57 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
  58 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
  59 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
  60 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
  61 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
  62 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
  63 traceroute request.</p>
  64
  65 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
  66 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
  67 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
  68 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
  69 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
  70
  71 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
  72 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
  73 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
  74 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
  75 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
  76 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
  77 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
  78 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
  79 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
  80
  81 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
  82 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
  83 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
  84 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
  85 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
  86 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
  87 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
  88 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
  89 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
  90 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
  91 render the page (in HAR format using
  92 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
  93 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
  94 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
  95 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
  96 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
  97
  98 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
  99 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>
 100
 101 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
 102 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
 103 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
 104 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
 105 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
 106 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
 107 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
 108 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
 109 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
 110 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
 111 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
 112 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
 113 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
 114 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
 115
 116 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
 117 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>
 118
 119 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
 120 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
 121 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
 122 question.
 123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
 124 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
 125 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
 126 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
 127 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
 128 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
 129 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
 130
 131 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
 132 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>
 133
 134 <p>In the process, I came across the
 135 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
 136 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
 137 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
 138 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
 139 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
 140 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
 141 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
 142 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
 143 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
 144 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
 145 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
 146 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
 147 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
 148 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
 149
 150 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
 151 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>
 152
 153 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
 154 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
 155 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
 156 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
 157
 158 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
 159 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
 160 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
 161 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
 162 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
 163 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
 164 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
 165
 166 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
 167 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
 168 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
 169 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
 170 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
 171 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
 172 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
 173
 174 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
 175 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
 176 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
 177 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
 178
 179 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 180 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 181 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 182
 183       </div>
 184       <div class="tags">
 185
 186
 187         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>.
 188
 189
 190       </div>
 191     </div>
 192     <div class="padding"></div>
 193
 194     <div class="entry">
 195       <div class="title">
 196         <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>
 197       </div>
 198       <div class="date">
 199         23rd December 2016
 200       </div>
 201       <div class="body">
 202         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
 203 readers probably know, I have been working on the
 204 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
 205 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
 206 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
 207 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
 208 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
 209 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
 210 metadata format.  And today,
 211 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
 212 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
 213 ie using fnmatch():</p>
 214
 215 <p><pre>
 216 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
 217   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
 218 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
 219 Name: pymissile
 220 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
 221 Package: pymissile
 222 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
 223 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
 224 Name: libnxt
 225 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
 226 Package: libnxt
 227 ---
 228 Identifier: t2n [generic]
 229 Name: t2n
 230 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
 231 Package: t2n
 232 ---
 233 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
 234 Name: python-nxt
 235 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
 236 Package: python-nxt
 237 ---
 238 Identifier: nbc [generic]
 239 Name: nbc
 240 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
 241 Package: nbc
 242 %
 243 </pre></p>
 244
 245 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
 246 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
 247
 248 <p><pre>
 249 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
 250 pymissile
 251 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
 252 libnxt
 253 nbc
 254 python-nxt
 255 t2n
 256 %
 257 </pre></p>
 258
 259 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
 260 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
 261
 262 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
 263 make the most of the hardware they have, please
 264 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
 265 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
 266 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
 267 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
 268 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
 269 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
 270 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
 271 part of my involvement in
 272 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
 273 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
 274 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
 275 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
 276 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
 277 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
 278 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
 279 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
 280 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
 281
 282 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 283 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 284 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 285
 286       </div>
 287       <div class="tags">
 288
 289
 290         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>.
 291
 292
 293       </div>
 294     </div>
 295     <div class="padding"></div>
 296
 297     <div class="entry">
 298       <div class="title">
 299         <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>
 300       </div>
 301       <div class="date">
 302         20th December 2016
 303       </div>
 304       <div class="body">
 305         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 306 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
 307 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
 308 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
 309 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
 310 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
 311 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
 312 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
 313 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
 314 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
 315
 316 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
 317
 318 <p><pre>
 319 % isenkram-lookup
 320 bluez
 321 cheese
 322 ethtool
 323 fprintd
 324 fprintd-demo
 325 gkrellm-thinkbat
 326 hdapsd
 327 libpam-fprintd
 328 pidgin-blinklight
 329 thinkfan
 330 tlp
 331 tp-smapi-dkms
 332 tp-smapi-source
 333 tpb
 334 %
 335 </pre></p>
 336
 337 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
 338 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
 339 I have all the firmware my machine need:
 340
 341 <p><pre>
 342 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 343 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 344 %
 345 </pre></p>
 346
 347 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
 348 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
 349 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
 350 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
 351 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
 352 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
 353 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
 354 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
 355
 356 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
 357 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
 358 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
 359
 360 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
 361 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
 362 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
 363 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
 364 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
 365 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
 366 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
 367 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
 368 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
 369 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
 370 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
 371 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
 372 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
 373 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
 374 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
 375 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
 376 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
 377 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
 378 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
 379 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
 380 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
 381 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
 382 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
 383 zd1211-firmware</p>
 384
 385 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
 386 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
 387 maintainer to
 388 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
 389 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
 390 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
 391 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
 392
 393 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
 394 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
 395 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
 396 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
 397 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
 398
 399       </div>
 400       <div class="tags">
 401
 402
 403         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>.
 404
 405
 406       </div>
 407     </div>
 408     <div class="padding"></div>
 409
 410     <div class="entry">
 411       <div class="title">
 412         <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>
 413       </div>
 414       <div class="date">
 415         11th December 2016
 416       </div>
 417       <div class="body">
 418         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
 419
 420 <p>In my early years, I played
 421 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
 422 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
 423 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
 424 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
 425 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
 426 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
 427 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
 428 small.</p>
 429
 430 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
 431 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
 432 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
 433 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
 434 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
 435 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
 436 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
 437 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
 438 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
 439
 440 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
 441 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
 442 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
 443 advantages of the
 444 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
 445 where information about each planet is easily available with common
 446 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
 447 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
 448 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
 449 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
 450 after less then a week.</p>
 451
 452 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
 453 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
 454 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
 455
 456 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 457 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 458 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 459
 460       </div>
 461       <div class="tags">
 462
 463
 464         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>.
 465
 466
 467       </div>
 468     </div>
 469     <div class="padding"></div>
 470
 471     <div class="entry">
 472       <div class="title">
 473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
 474       </div>
 475       <div class="date">
 476         25th November 2016
 477       </div>
 478       <div class="body">
 479         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
 480 installation system, observing how using
 481 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
 482 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
 483 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
 484 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
 485 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
 486 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
 487 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
 488 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
 489 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
 490 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
 491 up the process make perfect sense.
 492
 493 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
 494 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
 495 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
 496 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
 497 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
 498 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
 499 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
 500 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
 501 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
 502 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
 503
 504 <blockquote><pre>
 505 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
 506 </pre></blockquote>
 507
 508 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
 509 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
 510 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
 511 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
 512 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
 513 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
 514 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
 515 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
 516 tested its impact.</p>
 517
 518
 519       </div>
 520       <div class="tags">
 521
 522
 523         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>.
 524
 525
 526       </div>
 527     </div>
 528     <div class="padding"></div>
 529
 530     <div class="entry">
 531       <div class="title">
 532         <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>
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="date">
 535         24th November 2016
 536       </div>
 537       <div class="body">
 538         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
 539 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
 540 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
 541 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
 542 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
 543 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
 544 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
 545 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
 546 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
 547 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
 548 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
 549 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
 550 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
 551 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
 552 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
 553 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
 554 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
 555 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
 556 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
 557
 558 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
 559 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
 560 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
 561 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
 562 api.apertium.org.  Se
 563 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
 564 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
 565 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
 566 nynorsk.</p>
 567
 568 <hr/>
 569
 570 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
 571 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
 572 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
 573 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
 574 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
 575 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
 576 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
 577 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
 578 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
 579 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
 580 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
 581 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
 582 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
 583 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
 584 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
 585 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
 586 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
 587 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
 588 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
 589
 590 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
 591 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
 592 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
 593 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
 594 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
 595 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
 596 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
 597 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
 598 nynorsk.</p>
 599
 600       </div>
 601       <div class="tags">
 602
 603
 604         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>.
 605
 606
 607       </div>
 608     </div>
 609     <div class="padding"></div>
 610
 611     <div class="entry">
 612       <div class="title">
 613         <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>
 614       </div>
 615       <div class="date">
 616         13th November 2016
 617       </div>
 618       <div class="body">
 619         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
 620 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
 621 multi-threaded program, finally
 622 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
 623 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
 624 months since
 625 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
 626 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
 627 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
 628 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
 629 JavaScript libraries.</p>
 630
 631 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
 632
 633 <p><blockquote>
 634 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
 635 </blockquote></p>
 636
 637 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
 638 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
 639 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
 640 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
 641 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
 642
 643 <p><blockquote>
 644 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
 645 </blockquote></p>
 646
 647 <p>See the project home page and the
 648 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
 649 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
 650 working.</p>
 651
 652       </div>
 653       <div class="tags">
 654
 655
 656         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>.
 657
 658
 659       </div>
 660     </div>
 661     <div class="padding"></div>
 662
 663     <div class="entry">
 664       <div class="title">
 665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
 666       </div>
 667       <div class="date">
 668          4th November 2016
 669       </div>
 670       <div class="body">
 671         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
 672 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
 673 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
 674 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
 675 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
 676 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
 677 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
 678 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
 679 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
 680 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
 681 and had
 682 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
 683 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
 684 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
 685 loved ones. :)</p>
 686
 687 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
 688 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
 689 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
 690 building
 691 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
 692 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
 693 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
 694 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
 695 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
 696 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
 697 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
 698 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
 699
 700 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
 701
 702 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
 703 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
 704 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
 705 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
 706 the battery status run low:</p>
 707
 708 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
 709    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
 710 </video></p>
 711
 712 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
 713 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
 714
 715 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
 716 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
 717 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
 718 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
 719 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
 720 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
 721 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
 722 should.</p>
 723
 724       </div>
 725       <div class="tags">
 726
 727
 728         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>.
 729
 730
 731       </div>
 732     </div>
 733     <div class="padding"></div>
 734
 735     <div class="entry">
 736       <div class="title">
 737         <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>
 738       </div>
 739       <div class="date">
 740         10th October 2016
 741       </div>
 742       <div class="body">
 743         <p>In July
 744 <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
 745 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
 746 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
 747 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
 748
 749 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
 750 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
 751 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
 752 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
 753 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
 754 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
 755 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
 756 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
 757 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
 758 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
 759 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
 760 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
 761 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
 762 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
 763 time.</p>
 764
 765 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
 766 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
 767 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
 768 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
 769 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
 770 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
 771 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
 772
 773 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
 774 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
 775 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
 776 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
 777 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
 778 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
 779 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
 780 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
 781 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
 782 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
 783
 784 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
 785
 786 <ol>
 787
 788 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
 789 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
 790 know, so you need to install it.
 791
 792 <pre>
 793 apt install git tor chromium
 794 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 795 </pre></li>
 796
 797 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
 798 block below.</li>
 799
 800 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
 801 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
 802
 803 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
 804 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
 805 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
 806 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
 807 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
 808
 809 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
 810 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
 811 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
 812 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
 813 a associated contact database.</li>
 814
 815 </ol>
 816
 817 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
 818 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
 819 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
 820 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
 821 example
 822 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
 823 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
 824 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
 825 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
 826 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
 827 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
 828 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
 829 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
 830 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
 831 working on Debian Stable.</p>
 832
 833 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
 834 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
 835 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
 836
 837 <pre>
 838 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
 839 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
 840 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
 841 --- a/js/background.js
 842 +++ b/js/background.js
 843 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
 844          });
 845      });
 846
 847 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 848 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
 849      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
 850 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 851 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 852      var messageReceiver;
 853      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 854          if (messageReceiver) {
 855 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
 856 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
 857 --- a/js/expire.js
 858 +++ b/js/expire.js
 859 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 860  ;(function() {
 861      'use strict';
 862 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 863 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
 864
 865      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 866
 867 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
 868 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
 869 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
 870 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
 871 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
 872              return {
 873                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
 874                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
 875 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
 876 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
 877 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
 878              };
 879          },
 880          clearQR: function() {
 881 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
 882 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
 883 --- a/options.html
 884 +++ b/options.html
 885 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
 886          &lt;div class='nav'>
 887            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
 888            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
 889 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
 890 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
 891 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
 892 +
 893 +         &lt;/div>
 894            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
 895            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
 896            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
 897 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
 898 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
 899 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
 900 +#!/bin/sh
 901 +set -e
 902 +cd $(dirname $0)
 903 +mkdir -p userdata
 904 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
 905 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
 906 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
 907 +fi
 908 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
 909 +exec chromium \
 910 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 911 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 912 EOF
 913 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
 914 </pre>
 915
 916 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 917 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 918 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 919
 920       </div>
 921       <div class="tags">
 922
 923
 924         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>.
 925
 926
 927       </div>
 928     </div>
 929     <div class="padding"></div>
 930
 931     <div class="entry">
 932       <div class="title">
 933         <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>
 934       </div>
 935       <div class="date">
 936          7th October 2016
 937       </div>
 938       <div class="body">
 939         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 940 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
 941 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
 942 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
 943 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
 944 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
 945 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
 946 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
 947 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
 948 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
 949 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
 950 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
 951 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
 952
 953 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
 954 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
 955 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
 956 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
 957 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
 958 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
 959
 960 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
 961 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
 962 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
 963 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
 964 identifiers.</p>
 965
 966 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
 967 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
 968 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
 969 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
 970 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
 971 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
 972 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
 973 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
 974 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
 975 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
 976 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
 977 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
 978 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
 979 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
 980
 981 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
 982 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
 983 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
 984 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
 985 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
 986 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
 987 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
 988
 989 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
 990 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
 991 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
 992 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
 993 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
 994 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
 995 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
 996 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
 997 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
 998 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
 999 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
1000 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
1001 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
1002 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
1003 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
1004 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
1005 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
1006
1007 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
1008 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
1009 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
1010 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
1011 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
1012 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
1013 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
1014
1015 <p><pre>
1016 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
1017     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
1018 </pre></p>
1019
1020 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
1021 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
1022 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
1023 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
1024 to detect this?</p>
1025
1026 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
1027 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
1028 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
1029 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
1030 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
1031 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
1032 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
1033 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
1034 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
1035 directly if no such class exist.</p>
1036
1037 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
1038 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
1039 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
1040
1041 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
1042 please join us on our IRC channel
1043 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
1044 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
1045 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
1046 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
1047
1048 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1049 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1050 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1051
1052       </div>
1053       <div class="tags">
1054
1055
1056         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>.
1057
1058
1059       </div>
1060     </div>
1061     <div class="padding"></div>
1062
1063     <div class="entry">
1064       <div class="title">
1065         <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>
1066       </div>
1067       <div class="date">
1068         30th August 2016
1069       </div>
1070       <div class="body">
1071         <p>In April we
1072 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
1073 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
1074 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
1075 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
1076 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
1077 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
1078 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
1079 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
1080 contributing using
1081 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1082 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
1083 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1084 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
1085 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1086 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
1087 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
1088
1089 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
1090 electronic form.</p>
1091
1092       </div>
1093       <div class="tags">
1094
1095
1096         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>.
1097
1098
1099       </div>
1100     </div>
1101     <div class="padding"></div>
1102
1103     <div class="entry">
1104       <div class="title">
1105         <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>
1106       </div>
1107       <div class="date">
1108         11th August 2016
1109       </div>
1110       <div class="body">
1111         <p>This summer, I read a great article
1112 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
1113 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
1114 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
1115 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
1116 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
1117 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
1118 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
1119 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
1120 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
1121 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
1122 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
1123 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
1124
1125 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
1126 get the system into Debian.  I
1127 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
1128 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
1129 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
1130 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
1131 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
1132 profiling information included in the source package.
1133 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
1134
1135 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
1136 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
1137
1138 <p><blockquote><pre>
1139 coz run --- program-to-run
1140 </pre></blockquote></p>
1141
1142 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
1143 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
1144 most, use a web browser and either point it to
1145 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
1146 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
1147 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
1148 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
1149 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
1150 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
1151 targeted experiments.</p>
1152
1153 <p>A video published by ACM
1154 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
1155 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
1156 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
1157 titled
1158 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
1159 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
1160
1161 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
1162 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
1163 because it uses a
1164 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
1165 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
1166 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
1167 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
1168
1169 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
1170 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
1171 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
1172 C++ libraries.</p>
1173
1174       </div>
1175       <div class="tags">
1176
1177
1178         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>.
1179
1180
1181       </div>
1182     </div>
1183     <div class="padding"></div>
1184
1185     <div class="entry">
1186       <div class="title">
1187         <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>
1188       </div>
1189       <div class="date">
1190          7th July 2016
1191       </div>
1192       <div class="body">
1193         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
1194 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
1195 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
1196 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
1197 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
1198 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
1199 microphone The initial idea had been to just
1200 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
1201 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
1202 until a few days ago.</p>
1203
1204 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
1205 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
1206 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
1207 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
1208 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
1209 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
1210 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
1211
1212 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
1213 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
1214 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
1215 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
1216 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
1217 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
1218 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
1219 him.</p>
1220
1221 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
1222 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
1223 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
1224 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
1225 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
1226 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
1227 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
1228 devices it would work for.</p>
1229
1230 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
1231 followed some instructions
1232 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
1233 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
1234 machine with Debian testing:</p>
1235
1236 <p><pre>
1237 adb reboot-bootloader
1238 fastboot oem rebootRUU
1239 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
1240 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
1241 fastboot reboot
1242 </pre></p>
1243
1244 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
1245 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
1246 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
1247 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
1248 too.</p>
1249
1250 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
1251 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
1252 like this:</p>
1253
1254 <p><pre>
1255 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
1256 </pre>
1257
1258 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
1259 this:</p>
1260
1261 <p><pre>
1262 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
1263 </pre></p>
1264
1265 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
1266 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
1267 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
1268 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
1269 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
1270
1271       </div>
1272       <div class="tags">
1273
1274
1275         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>.
1276
1277
1278       </div>
1279     </div>
1280     <div class="padding"></div>
1281
1282     <div class="entry">
1283       <div class="title">
1284         <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>
1285       </div>
1286       <div class="date">
1287          3rd July 2016
1288       </div>
1289       <div class="body">
1290         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
1291 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
1292 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
1293 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
1294 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
1295 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
1296 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
1297 Github source, compared it to the source in
1298 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
1299 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
1300 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
1301 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
1302 the recipe how I did it.</p>
1303
1304 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
1305
1306 <pre>
1307 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1308 </pre>
1309
1310 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
1311 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
1312
1313 <pre>
1314 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
1315 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
1316 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
1317 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
1318 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
1319          });
1320      });
1321
1322 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1323 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1324 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
1325 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1326      var messageReceiver;
1327      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1328          if (messageReceiver) {
1329 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
1330 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
1331 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
1332 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
1333  ;(function() {
1334      'use strict';
1335 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
1336 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
1337
1338      window.extension = window.extension || {};
1339
1340 EOF
1341 </pre>
1342
1343 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
1344 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
1345 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
1346 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
1347
1348 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
1349 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
1350
1351 <pre>
1352 #!/bin/sh
1353 cd $(dirname $0)
1354 mkdir -p userdata
1355 exec chromium \
1356   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
1357   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
1358 </pre>
1359
1360 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
1361 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
1362 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
1363 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
1364 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
1365
1366 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
1367 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
1368 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
1369 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
1370 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
1371 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
1372 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
1373 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
1374 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
1375 Signal from my laptop.
1376
1377 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
1378 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
1379 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
1380 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
1381 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
1382 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
1383 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
1384 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
1385 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
1386 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
1387 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
1388 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
1389
1390 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
1391 on this topic in
1392 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
1393 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
1394 phone</a>.</p>
1395
1396       </div>
1397       <div class="tags">
1398
1399
1400         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>.
1401
1402
1403       </div>
1404     </div>
1405     <div class="padding"></div>
1406
1407     <div class="entry">
1408       <div class="title">
1409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1410       </div>
1411       <div class="date">
1412          6th June 2016
1413       </div>
1414       <div class="body">
1415         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
1416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
1417 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
1418 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
1419 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
1420 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
1421 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
1422 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
1423 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
1424
1425 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
1426 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
1427 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
1428 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
1429 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
1430 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
1431 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
1432
1433 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
1434 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
1435 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
1436 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
1437 toten and parole.</p>
1438
1439 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
1440 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
1441 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
1442 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
1443 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
1444 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
1445 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
1446 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
1447 formats.</p>
1448
1449       </div>
1450       <div class="tags">
1451
1452
1453         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>.
1454
1455
1456       </div>
1457     </div>
1458     <div class="padding"></div>
1459
1460     <div class="entry">
1461       <div class="title">
1462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
1463       </div>
1464       <div class="date">
1465          5th June 2016
1466       </div>
1467       <div class="body">
1468         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
1469 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
1470 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
1471 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
1472 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
1473 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
1474 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
1475 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
1476 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
1477 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
1478 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
1479 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
1480 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
1481 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
1482 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
1483 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
1484 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
1485 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
1486 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
1487 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
1488
1489 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
1490 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
1491 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
1492 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
1493 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
1494 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
1495 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
1496 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
1497 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
1498 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
1499 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
1500 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
1501 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
1502 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
1503
1504 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
1505 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
1506 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
1507 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
1508 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
1509 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
1510 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
1511 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
1512
1513 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
1514 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
1515 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
1516 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
1517 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
1518 information is collected from
1519 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
1520 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
1521 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
1522 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
1523 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
1524 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
1525 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
1526 type (preferably
1527 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
1528 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
1529 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
1530 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
1531
1532 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
1533 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
1534 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
1535
1536 <p><blockquote><pre>
1537 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
1538 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
1539   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
1540     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
1541     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
1542     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
1543   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
1544 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
1545 </pre></blockquote></p>
1546
1547 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
1548 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
1549 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
1550 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
1551
1552 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
1553 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
1554 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
1555
1556 <p><blockquote><pre>
1557 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
1558 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
1559 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
1560 %
1561 </pre></blockquote></p>
1562
1563 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
1564 MimeType= line.</p>
1565
1566 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
1567 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
1568 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
1569 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
1570 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
1571 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
1572 fixed. :)</p>
1573
1574       </div>
1575       <div class="tags">
1576
1577
1578         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>.
1579
1580
1581       </div>
1582     </div>
1583     <div class="padding"></div>
1584
1585     <div class="entry">
1586       <div class="title">
1587         <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>
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="date">
1590         25th May 2016
1591       </div>
1592       <div class="body">
1593         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
1594 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
1595 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
1596 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
1597 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
1598 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
1599 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
1600 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
1601 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
1602 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
1603 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
1604 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
1605
1606 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
1607 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
1608 is going away and is generally being replaced by
1609 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
1610 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
1611 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
1612 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
1613 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
1614 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
1615 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
1616 and see if it is recognised.</p>
1617
1618 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
1619 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
1620 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
1621
1622 <p><blockquote><pre>
1623 % isenkram-lookup
1624 bluez
1625 cheese
1626 fprintd
1627 fprintd-demo
1628 gkrellm-thinkbat
1629 hdapsd
1630 libpam-fprintd
1631 pidgin-blinklight
1632 thinkfan
1633 tleds
1634 tp-smapi-dkms
1635 tp-smapi-source
1636 tpb
1637 %p
1638 </pre></blockquote></p>
1639
1640 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
1641 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
1642 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
1643 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
1644 See
1645 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
1646 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
1647
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="tags">
1650
1651
1652         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>.
1653
1654
1655       </div>
1656     </div>
1657     <div class="padding"></div>
1658
1659     <div class="entry">
1660       <div class="title">
1661         <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>
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="date">
1664         23rd May 2016
1665       </div>
1666       <div class="body">
1667         <p>Yesterday I updated the
1668 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
1669 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
1670 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
1671 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
1672 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
1673 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
1674 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
1675 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
1676 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
1677 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
1678
1679 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
1680 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
1681 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
1682 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
1683 capacity.</p>
1684
1685 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
1686
1687 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
1688 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
1689 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
1690 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
1691
1692 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
1693
1694 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
1695 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
1696 shrinking. :(</p>
1697
1698 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
1699 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
1700 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
1701 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
1702 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
1703 machine.</p>
1704
1705 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1706 check out the
1707 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1708 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1709 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
1710 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1711 Patches are very welcome.</p>
1712
1713 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1714 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1715 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1716
1717       </div>
1718       <div class="tags">
1719
1720
1721         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>.
1722
1723
1724       </div>
1725     </div>
1726     <div class="padding"></div>
1727
1728     <div class="entry">
1729       <div class="title">
1730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
1731       </div>
1732       <div class="date">
1733         12th May 2016
1734       </div>
1735       <div class="body">
1736         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
1737 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
1738 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
1739 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
1740 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
1741 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1742 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
1743 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
1744 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
1745 great if you could help out with
1746 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
1747 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
1748
1749       </div>
1750       <div class="tags">
1751
1752
1753         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>.
1754
1755
1756       </div>
1757     </div>
1758     <div class="padding"></div>
1759
1760     <div class="entry">
1761       <div class="title">
1762         <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>
1763       </div>
1764       <div class="date">
1765          8th May 2016
1766       </div>
1767       <div class="body">
1768         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
1769 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
1770
1771 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
1772 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
1773 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
1774 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
1775 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
1776 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
1777 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
1778 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
1779 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
1780 players.</p>
1781
1782 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
1783 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
1784 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
1785 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
1786 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
1787 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
1788 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
1789 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
1790 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
1791 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
1792 support most file formats.</p>
1793
1794 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
1795 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
1796 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
1797 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
1798 listed first in the table.</p>
1799
1800 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
1801 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
1802 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
1803 support?</p>
1804
1805       </div>
1806       <div class="tags">
1807
1808
1809         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>.
1810
1811
1812       </div>
1813     </div>
1814     <div class="padding"></div>
1815
1816     <div class="entry">
1817       <div class="title">
1818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
1819       </div>
1820       <div class="date">
1821          4th May 2016
1822       </div>
1823       <div class="body">
1824         A friend of mine made me aware of
1825 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
1826 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
1827 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
1828
1829 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
1830 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
1831 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
1832 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
1833 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
1834 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
1835 production started.</p>
1836
1837 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
1838 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
1839 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
1840
1841       </div>
1842       <div class="tags">
1843
1844
1845         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>.
1846
1847
1848       </div>
1849     </div>
1850     <div class="padding"></div>
1851
1852     <div class="entry">
1853       <div class="title">
1854         <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>
1855       </div>
1856       <div class="date">
1857         10th April 2016
1858       </div>
1859       <div class="body">
1860         <p>During this weekends
1861 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
1862 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
1863 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
1864 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
1865 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
1866 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
1867 contributing using
1868 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1869 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
1870 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1871 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
1872 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1873 contributors</a>.</p>
1874
1875 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
1876 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
1877 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
1878 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
1879 available for many more languages.</p>
1880
1881       </div>
1882       <div class="tags">
1883
1884
1885         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>.
1886
1887
1888       </div>
1889     </div>
1890     <div class="padding"></div>
1891
1892     <div class="entry">
1893       <div class="title">
1894         <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>
1895       </div>
1896       <div class="date">
1897          7th April 2016
1898       </div>
1899       <div class="body">
1900         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
1901 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
1902 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
1903 But I might be wrong.</p>
1904
1905 <p>According to
1906 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
1907 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
1908 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
1909 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
1910 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
1911 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
1912 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
1913 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
1914 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
1915 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
1916
1917 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
1918 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
1919 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
1920 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
1921 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
1922 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
1923 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
1924 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1925 team status page</a>, and
1926 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
1927 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
1928
1929 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
1930 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
1931 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
1932 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
1933 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
1934 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
1935 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
1936 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
1937 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
1938 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
1939 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
1940 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
1941
1942       </div>
1943       <div class="tags">
1944
1945
1946         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>.
1947
1948
1949       </div>
1950     </div>
1951     <div class="padding"></div>
1952
1953     <div class="entry">
1954       <div class="title">
1955         <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>
1956       </div>
1957       <div class="date">
1958         23rd March 2016
1959       </div>
1960       <div class="body">
1961         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
1962 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
1963 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
1964 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
1965 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
1966 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
1967 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
1968 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
1969
1970 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
1971 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
1972 and lifetime prediction by running:
1973
1974 <p><pre>
1975 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
1976 </pre></p>
1977
1978 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
1979
1980 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
1981 entry yet):</p>
1982
1983 <p><pre>
1984 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
1985 </pre></p>
1986
1987 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
1988 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
1989 few years of data.</p>
1990
1991 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
1992 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
1993 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
1994 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
1995 know.  The issue is reported as
1996 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
1997 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
1998 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
1999 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
2000 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
2001
2002 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2003 check out the
2004 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
2005 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2006 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
2007 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2008 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
2009
2010       </div>
2011       <div class="tags">
2012
2013
2014         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>.
2015
2016
2017       </div>
2018     </div>
2019     <div class="padding"></div>
2020
2021     <div class="entry">
2022       <div class="title">
2023         <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>
2024       </div>
2025       <div class="date">
2026         15th March 2016
2027       </div>
2028       <div class="body">
2029         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
2030 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
2031 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
2032 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
2033 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
2034 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
2035 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
2036 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
2037 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
2038 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
2039 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
2040
2041 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
2042 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
2043 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
2044 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
2045 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
2046 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
2047 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
2048 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
2049 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
2050 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
2051 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
2052
2053 <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>
2054
2055 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
2056 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
2057 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
2058 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
2059 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
2060 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
2061
2062 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
2063 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
2064 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
2065 and graphing.</p>
2066
2067 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
2068 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
2069 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
2070 on
2071 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2072 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
2073
2074       </div>
2075       <div class="tags">
2076
2077
2078         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>.
2079
2080
2081       </div>
2082     </div>
2083     <div class="padding"></div>
2084
2085     <div class="entry">
2086       <div class="title">
2087         <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>
2088       </div>
2089       <div class="date">
2090         19th February 2016
2091       </div>
2092       <div class="body">
2093         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
2094 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
2095 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
2096 the code in the package in question, preferably in
2097 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
2098 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
2099
2100 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
2101 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
2102 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
2103 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
2104 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
2105 out what was wrong with
2106 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
2107 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
2108 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
2109 semi-automatically.</p>
2110
2111 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
2112 file based on the code in the source package,
2113 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
2114 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
2115 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
2116 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
2117 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
2118 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
2119 option in
2120 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
2121 blog posts from 2014</a>.
2122
2123 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
2124
2125 <p><pre>
2126 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
2127 </pre></p>
2128
2129 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
2130 this might not be the best option.</p>
2131
2132 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
2133 this approach in
2134 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
2135 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
2136 dpkg-copyright' option:
2137
2138 <p><pre>
2139 cme update dpkg-copyright
2140 </pre></p>
2141
2142 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
2143 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
2144
2145 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
2146 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
2147 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
2148 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
2149 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
2150 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
2151 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
2152 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
2153 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
2154 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
2155
2156 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
2157 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
2158 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
2159 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
2160
2161 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
2162 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
2163 planet.debian.org.</p>
2164
2165 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2166 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2167 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2168
2169 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
2170 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
2171
2172 <p><pre>
2173 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
2174   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
2175 </pre></p>
2176
2177 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
2178 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
2179 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
2180 with my packages in the future.</p>
2181
2182 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
2183 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
2184 command line.</p>
2185
2186       </div>
2187       <div class="tags">
2188
2189
2190         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>.
2191
2192
2193       </div>
2194     </div>
2195     <div class="padding"></div>
2196
2197     <div class="entry">
2198       <div class="title">
2199         <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>
2200       </div>
2201       <div class="date">
2202          4th February 2016
2203       </div>
2204       <div class="body">
2205         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
2206 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
2207 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
2208 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
2209 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
2210 about. :)</p>
2211
2212 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
2213 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
2214 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
2215 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
2216 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
2217 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
2218
2219 <blockquote><pre>
2220 % apt install appstream
2221 [...]
2222 % apt update
2223 [...]
2224 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
2225   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
2226 firmware-qlogic
2227 %
2228 </pre></blockquote>
2229
2230 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
2231 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
2232 a way appstream can use.</p>
2233
2234 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
2235 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
2236 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
2237 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
2238 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
2239 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
2240
2241 <blockquote><pre>
2242 % apt install appstream
2243 [...]
2244 % apt update
2245 [...]
2246 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
2247   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
2248 bkchem
2249 phototonic
2250 inkscape
2251 shutter
2252 tetzle
2253 geeqie
2254 xia
2255 pinta
2256 gthumb
2257 karbon
2258 comix
2259 mirage
2260 viewnior
2261 postr
2262 ristretto
2263 kolourpaint4
2264 eog
2265 eom
2266 gimagereader
2267 midori
2268 %
2269 </pre></blockquote>
2270
2271 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
2272 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
2273
2274       </div>
2275       <div class="tags">
2276
2277
2278         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>.
2279
2280
2281       </div>
2282     </div>
2283     <div class="padding"></div>
2284
2285     <div class="entry">
2286       <div class="title">
2287         <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>
2288       </div>
2289       <div class="date">
2290         24th January 2016
2291       </div>
2292       <div class="body">
2293         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
2294 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
2295 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
2296 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
2297 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
2298 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
2299 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
2300 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
2301 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
2302 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
2303 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
2304 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
2305 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
2306 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
2307 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
2308 entities.</p>
2309
2310 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
2311
2312 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
2313 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
2314 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
2315 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
2316 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
2317 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
2318 tool to do so is called
2319 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
2320 discovered it when I read
2321 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
2322 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
2323 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
2324 The python program was in Debian, but
2325 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
2326 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
2327 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
2328 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
2329 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
2330 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
2331 are now included
2332 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
2333
2334 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
2335 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
2336 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
2337 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
2338 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
2339 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
2340 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
2341 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
2342 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
2343 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
2344 about yourself with the services.</p>
2345
2346 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
2347 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
2348 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
2349 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
2350 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
2351 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
2352 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
2353 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
2354 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
2355 things.  A similar technique have been
2356 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
2357 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
2358 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
2359 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
2360 public.</p>
2361
2362 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
2363 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
2364 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
2365 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
2366
2367 <p>(I have uploaded
2368 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
2369 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
2370 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
2371
2372       </div>
2373       <div class="tags">
2374
2375
2376         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>.
2377
2378
2379       </div>
2380     </div>
2381     <div class="padding"></div>
2382
2383     <div class="entry">
2384       <div class="title">
2385         <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>
2386       </div>
2387       <div class="date">
2388         15th January 2016
2389       </div>
2390       <div class="body">
2391         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
2392 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
2393 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
2394 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
2395 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
2396 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
2397 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
2398 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
2399 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
2400 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
2401 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
2402 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
2403 was not the first to propose this, as the
2404 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
2405 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
2406 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
2407 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
2408
2409 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
2410 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
2411 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
2412 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
2413 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
2414
2415 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
2416 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
2417 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
2418 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
2419 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
2420 done in /etc/.</p>
2421
2422 <blockquote><pre>
2423 apt install apt-transport-tor
2424 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2425 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2426 </pre></blockquote>
2427
2428 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
2429 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
2430 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
2431 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
2432
2433 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
2434 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
2435 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
2436 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
2437 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
2438 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
2439
2440 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
2441 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
2442 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
2443 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
2444 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
2445
2446 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
2447 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
2448 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
2449 system.</p>
2450
2451       </div>
2452       <div class="tags">
2453
2454
2455         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>.
2456
2457
2458       </div>
2459     </div>
2460     <div class="padding"></div>
2461
2462     <div class="entry">
2463       <div class="title">
2464         <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>
2465       </div>
2466       <div class="date">
2467         23rd December 2015
2468       </div>
2469       <div class="body">
2470         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
2471 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
2472 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
2473 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
2474 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
2475 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
2476
2477 <p>A few days I came across
2478 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
2479 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
2480 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
2481 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
2482 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
2483 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
2484 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
2485 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
2486 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
2487 discovered the developer
2488 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
2489 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
2490 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
2491 archive.</p>
2492
2493 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
2494 it into Debian, where it currently
2495 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
2496 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
2497
2498 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
2499 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
2500 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
2501 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
2502 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
2503 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
2504 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
2505 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
2506 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
2507 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
2508 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
2509 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
2510
2511 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
2512 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
2513 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
2514 package show up in unstable.</p>
2515
2516       </div>
2517       <div class="tags">
2518
2519
2520         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>.
2521
2522
2523       </div>
2524     </div>
2525     <div class="padding"></div>
2526
2527     <div class="entry">
2528       <div class="title">
2529         <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>
2530       </div>
2531       <div class="date">
2532         20th December 2015
2533       </div>
2534       <div class="body">
2535         <p>Around three years ago, I created
2536 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
2537 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
2538 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
2539 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
2540 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
2541 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
2542 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
2543 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
2544 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
2545 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
2546 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
2547 with.</p>
2548
2549 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
2550 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
2551 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
2552 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
2553 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
2554 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
2555 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2556 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
2557 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
2558 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
2559 Debian version of appstream.</p>
2560
2561 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
2562 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
2563 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
2564 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
2565 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
2566 how do add the required
2567 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
2568 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
2569 this content:</p>
2570
2571 <blockquote><pre>
2572 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2573 &lt;component&gt;
2574   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
2575   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
2576   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
2577   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
2578   &lt;description&gt;
2579     &lt;p&gt;
2580       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
2581       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
2582       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
2583       launcher.
2584     &lt;/p&gt;
2585   &lt;/description&gt;
2586   &lt;provides&gt;
2587     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
2588   &lt;/provides&gt;
2589 &lt;/component&gt;
2590 </pre></blockquote>
2591
2592 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
2593 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
2594 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
2595 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
2596 0202.</p>
2597
2598 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
2599 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
2600 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
2601 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
2602 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
2603 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
2604 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
2605 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
2606
2607 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
2608 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
2609 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
2610 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
2611 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
2612
2613 <blockquote><pre>
2614 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
2615 </pre></blockquote>
2616
2617 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
2618 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
2619 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
2620 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
2621 question.</p>
2622
2623 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
2624 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
2625
2626 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
2627 try running this command on the command line:</p>
2628
2629 <blockquote><pre>
2630 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
2631 </pre></blockquote>
2632
2633 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2634 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2635 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2636
2637       </div>
2638       <div class="tags">
2639
2640
2641         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>.
2642
2643
2644       </div>
2645     </div>
2646     <div class="padding"></div>
2647
2648     <div class="entry">
2649       <div class="title">
2650         <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>
2651       </div>
2652       <div class="date">
2653         30th November 2015
2654       </div>
2655       <div class="body">
2656         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
2657 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
2658 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
2659 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
2660 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
2661
2662 <blockquote>
2663
2664 <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>
2665
2666 <blockquote>
2667 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
2668
2669 The first step is to choose a
2670 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
2671 code.<br/>
2672
2673 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
2674 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
2675
2676 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
2677 work<br/>
2678
2679 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
2680 </blockquote>
2681
2682 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
2683 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
2684 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
2685 0x57</a></small></p>
2686
2687 <p>As the Debian Website
2688 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
2689 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
2690 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
2691 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
2692 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
2693 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
2694 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
2695 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
2696 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
2697 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
2698 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
2699 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
2700 Freedom">FaiF</a>
2701 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
2702 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
2703 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
2704 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
2705 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
2706 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
2707 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
2708 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
2709 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
2710 In March the SFC supported a
2711 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
2712 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
2713 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
2714 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
2715 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
2716 conferences
2717 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
2718 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
2719 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
2720 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
2721 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
2722 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
2723 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
2724 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
2725 Software.</p>
2726
2727 <p>If you support Free Software,
2728 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
2729 what the SFC do, agree with their
2730 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
2731 principles</a>, are happy about their
2732 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
2733 work on a project that is an SFC
2734 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
2735 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
2736 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
2737 Allan Webber</a>,
2738 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
2739 Smith</a>,
2740 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
2741 Bacon</a>, myself and
2742 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
2743 becoming a
2744 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
2745 next week your donation will be
2746 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
2747 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
2748 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
2749 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
2750 social media accounts.</p>
2751
2752 </blockquote>
2753
2754 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
2755 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
2756 supporter too?</p>
2757
2758       </div>
2759       <div class="tags">
2760
2761
2762         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>.
2763
2764
2765       </div>
2766     </div>
2767     <div class="padding"></div>
2768
2769     <div class="entry">
2770       <div class="title">
2771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
2772       </div>
2773       <div class="date">
2774         17th November 2015
2775       </div>
2776       <div class="body">
2777         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
2778 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
2779 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
2780 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
2781 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
2782 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
2783 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
2784 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
2785 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
2786 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
2787
2788 <pre>
2789 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
2790       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
2791 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
2792 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
2793 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2794 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2795 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2796 </pre>
2797
2798 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
2799 my old key.</p>
2800
2801 <p>If you signed my old key
2802 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
2803 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
2804 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
2805 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
2806
2807       </div>
2808       <div class="tags">
2809
2810
2811         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>.
2812
2813
2814       </div>
2815     </div>
2816     <div class="padding"></div>
2817
2818     <div class="entry">
2819       <div class="title">
2820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
2821       </div>
2822       <div class="date">
2823         24th September 2015
2824       </div>
2825       <div class="body">
2826         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
2827 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
2828 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
2829 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
2830 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
2831 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
2832 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
2833
2834 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
2835
2836 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
2837 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
2838 by someone else.  I found
2839 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
2840 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
2841 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
2842 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
2843 from him.  Via
2844 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
2845 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
2846 discovered
2847 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
2848 available in Debian.</p>
2849
2850 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
2851 battery stats ever since. Now my
2852 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
2853 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
2854 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
2855 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
2856
2857 <pre>
2858 #!/bin/sh
2859 # Inspired by
2860 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
2861 # See also
2862 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
2863 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
2864
2865 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
2866     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
2867
2868 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
2869     (
2870         printf "timestamp,"
2871         for f in $files; do
2872             printf "%s," $f
2873         done
2874         echo
2875     ) > "$logfile"
2876 fi
2877
2878 log_battery() {
2879     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
2880     # when several log processes run in parallel.
2881     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
2882         for f in $files; do \
2883             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
2884         done)
2885     echo "$msg"
2886 }
2887
2888 cd /sys/class/power_supply
2889
2890 for bat in BAT*; do
2891     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
2892 done
2893 </pre>
2894
2895 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
2896 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
2897 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
2898 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
2899 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
2900 The code for the Debian package
2901 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
2902 available on github</a>.</p>
2903
2904 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
2905
2906 <pre>
2907 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
2908 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
2909 [...]
2910 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
2911 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
2912 </pre>
2913
2914 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
2915 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
2916 battery.</p>
2917
2918 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
2919 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
2920 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
2921 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
2922 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
2923 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
2924 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
2925 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
2926 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
2927 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
2928 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
2929 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
2930 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
2931 Linux too.</p>
2932
2933 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
2934 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
2935 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
2936 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
2937 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
2938 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
2939 load).</p>
2940
2941 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
2942 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
2943 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
2944 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
2945 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
2946 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
2947 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
2948 those.</p>
2949
2950 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
2951 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
2952 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
2953 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
2954 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
2955 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
2956 specific.</p>
2957
2958       </div>
2959       <div class="tags">
2960
2961
2962         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2963
2964
2965       </div>
2966     </div>
2967     <div class="padding"></div>
2968
2969     <div class="entry">
2970       <div class="title">
2971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
2972       </div>
2973       <div class="date">
2974          5th July 2015
2975       </div>
2976       <div class="body">
2977         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
2978 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
2979 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
2980 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
2981 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
2982 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
2983 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
2984 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
2985 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
2986 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
2987 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
2988
2989 <p>One tip I got was to use the
2990 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
2991 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
2992 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
2993 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
2994 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
2995 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
2996
2997 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
2998 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
2999 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
3000 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
3001 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
3002 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
3003 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
3004 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
3005 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
3006 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
3007 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
3008 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
3009 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
3010 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
3011 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
3012
3013 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
3014 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
3015 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
3016 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
3017
3018 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
3019 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
3020
3021 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
3022 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
3023 different
3024 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
3025 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
3026
3027       </div>
3028       <div class="tags">
3029
3030
3031         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>.
3032
3033
3034       </div>
3035     </div>
3036     <div class="padding"></div>
3037
3038     <div class="entry">
3039       <div class="title">
3040         <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>
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="date">
3043          3rd July 2015
3044       </div>
3045       <div class="body">
3046         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
3047 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
3048 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
3049 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
3050 flickering.</p>
3051
3052 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
3053 still as
3054 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
3055 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
3056 good help from
3057 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
3058 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
3059 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
3060 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
3061 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
3062 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
3063 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
3064 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
3065 deteriorated since X41.</p>
3066
3067 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
3068 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
3069 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
3070 have suggestions.</p>
3071
3072 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
3073 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
3074 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
3075
3076       </div>
3077       <div class="tags">
3078
3079
3080         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>.
3081
3082
3083       </div>
3084     </div>
3085     <div class="padding"></div>
3086
3087     <div class="entry">
3088       <div class="title">
3089         <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>
3090       </div>
3091       <div class="date">
3092         22nd November 2014
3093       </div>
3094       <div class="body">
3095         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
3096 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
3097 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
3098 courtesy of
3099 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
3100 Schubert</a> and
3101 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
3102 McVittie</a>.
3103
3104 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
3105 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
3106 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
3107 you upgrade:</p>
3108
3109 <p><blockquote><pre>
3110 Package: systemd-sysv
3111 Pin: release o=Debian
3112 Pin-Priority: -1
3113 </pre></blockquote><p>
3114
3115 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
3116 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
3117 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
3118 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
3119 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
3120
3121 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
3122 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
3123 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
3124 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
3125 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
3126 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
3127
3128 <p><blockquote><pre>
3129 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
3130 </pre></blockquote><p>
3131
3132 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
3133
3134 <p><blockquote><pre>
3135 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
3136 </pre></blockquote><p>
3137
3138 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
3139 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
3140
3141 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
3142 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
3143 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
3144 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
3145 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
3146 Jessie is released.</p>
3147
3148 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
3149 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
3150 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
3151 line.</p>
3152
3153       </div>
3154       <div class="tags">
3155
3156
3157         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>.
3158
3159
3160       </div>
3161     </div>
3162     <div class="padding"></div>
3163
3164     <div class="entry">
3165       <div class="title">
3166         <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>
3167       </div>
3168       <div class="date">
3169         10th November 2014
3170       </div>
3171       <div class="body">
3172         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
3173 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
3174 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
3175
3176 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
3177 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
3178 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
3179 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
3180 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
3181 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
3182 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
3183 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
3184 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
3185 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
3186 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
3187 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
3188 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
3189 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
3190 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
3191
3192 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
3193 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
3194 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
3195 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
3196 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
3197 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
3198 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
3199 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
3200 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
3201 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
3202 were fairly easy, and
3203 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
3204 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
3205 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
3206 useful approach.</p>
3207
3208 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
3209 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
3210 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
3211 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
3212 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
3213 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
3214 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
3215 this:</p>
3216
3217 <p><blockquote><pre>
3218 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
3219   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
3220 </pre></blockquote></p>
3221
3222 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
3223 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
3224
3225 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
3226 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
3227 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
3228 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
3229 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
3230 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
3231 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
3232 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
3233 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
3234 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
3235 system.</p>
3236
3237 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
3238 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
3239 SMTorP. :)</p>
3240
3241       </div>
3242       <div class="tags">
3243
3244
3245         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>.
3246
3247
3248       </div>
3249     </div>
3250     <div class="padding"></div>
3251
3252     <div class="entry">
3253       <div class="title">
3254         <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>
3255       </div>
3256       <div class="date">
3257         22nd October 2014
3258       </div>
3259       <div class="body">
3260         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
3261 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
3262 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
3263 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
3264 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
3265 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
3266 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
3267 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
3268 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
3269 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
3270 lists I recently took over:</p>
3271
3272 <p><blockquote><pre>
3273 % time listadmin xiph
3274 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3275 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3276
3277 real    0m1.709s
3278 user    0m0.232s
3279 sys     0m0.012s
3280 %
3281 </pre></blockquote></p>
3282
3283 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
3284 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
3285 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
3286 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
3287 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
3288 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
3289 program.</p>
3290
3291 <p>If you install
3292 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
3293 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
3294 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
3295
3296 <p><blockquote><pre>
3297 username username@example.org
3298 spamlevel 23
3299 default discard
3300 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
3301
3302 password secret
3303 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
3304 mailman-list@lists.example.com
3305
3306 password hidden
3307 other-list@otherserver.example.org
3308 </pre></blockquote></p>
3309
3310 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
3311 learn the details.</p>
3312
3313 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
3314 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
3315 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
3316 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
3317
3318 <p><blockquote><pre>
3319 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
3320 </pre></blockquote></p>
3321
3322 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
3323 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
3324 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
3325 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
3326 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
3327 email.</p>
3328
3329 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
3330 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
3331 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
3332 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
3333 software.</p>
3334
3335 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3336 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3337 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3338
3339 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
3340 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
3341 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
3342 sure why.</p>
3343
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="tags">
3346
3347
3348         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>.
3349
3350
3351       </div>
3352     </div>
3353     <div class="padding"></div>
3354
3355     <div class="entry">
3356       <div class="title">
3357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
3358       </div>
3359       <div class="date">
3360         17th October 2014
3361       </div>
3362       <div class="body">
3363         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
3364 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
3365 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
3366 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
3367 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
3368 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
3369 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
3370
3371 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
3372 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
3373 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
3374 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
3375 of this story.)</p>
3376
3377 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
3378 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
3379 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
3380 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
3381 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
3382 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
3383 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
3384 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
3385 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
3386 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
3387
3388 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
3389 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
3390 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
3391 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
3392
3393 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
3394 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
3395
3396 <p><blockquote><pre>
3397 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
3398 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
3399 </pre></blockquote></p>
3400
3401 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
3402 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
3403 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
3404 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
3405 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
3406 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
3407 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
3408 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
3409
3410 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
3411 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
3412
3413 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
3414 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
3415 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
3416 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
3417 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
3418
3419 <p><blockquote><pre>
3420 Task: isenkram-packages
3421 Section: hardware
3422 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3423  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3424  proposed.
3425 Test-new-install: show show
3426 Relevance: 8
3427 Packages: for-current-hardware
3428
3429 Task: isenkram-firmware
3430 Section: hardware
3431 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3432  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
3433  packages are proposed.
3434 Test-new-install: mark show
3435 Relevance: 8
3436 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
3437 </pre></blockquote></p>
3438
3439 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
3440 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
3441 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
3442 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
3443 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
3444
3445 <p><blockquote><pre>
3446 #!/bin/sh
3447 #
3448 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
3449 export PATH
3450 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3451 </pre></blockquote></p>
3452
3453 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
3454 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
3455
3456 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
3457 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
3458 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
3459 install.</p>
3460
3461 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
3462 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
3463 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
3464
3465       </div>
3466       <div class="tags">
3467
3468
3469         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>.
3470
3471
3472       </div>
3473     </div>
3474     <div class="padding"></div>
3475
3476     <div class="entry">
3477       <div class="title">
3478         <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>
3479       </div>
3480       <div class="date">
3481          4th October 2014
3482       </div>
3483       <div class="body">
3484         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
3485 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
3486 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
3487 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
3488
3489 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
3490
3491 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
3492 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
3493 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
3494
3495       </div>
3496       <div class="tags">
3497
3498
3499         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>.
3500
3501
3502       </div>
3503     </div>
3504     <div class="padding"></div>
3505
3506     <div class="entry">
3507       <div class="title">
3508         <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>
3509       </div>
3510       <div class="date">
3511          4th October 2014
3512       </div>
3513       <div class="body">
3514         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
3515 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
3516 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
3517 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
3518 Dibb.</p>
3519
3520 <p>I just wrapped up
3521 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
3522 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
3523 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
3524 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
3525 0.17.</p>
3526
3527 <ul>
3528
3529  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
3530  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
3531    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
3532  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
3533  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
3534  <li>Fix include orders</li>
3535  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
3536  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
3537  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
3538    the palette size is the same.</li>
3539  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
3540  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
3541  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
3542  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
3543    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
3544
3545 </ul>
3546
3547 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
3548 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
3549 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
3550
3551       </div>
3552       <div class="tags">
3553
3554
3555         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>.
3556
3557
3558       </div>
3559     </div>
3560     <div class="padding"></div>
3561
3562     <div class="entry">
3563       <div class="title">
3564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3565       </div>
3566       <div class="date">
3567         26th September 2014
3568       </div>
3569       <div class="body">
3570         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3571 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3572 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3573 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3574 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3575 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3576 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3577 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3578 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3579 future.  The
3580 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3581 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3582 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3583 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
3584 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
3585
3586 <p>First, download the test ISO via
3587 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
3588 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
3589 or rsync (use
3590 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
3591 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
3592 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
3593 install with some tweaking.</p>
3594
3595 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
3596 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
3597
3598 <p><blockquote><pre>
3599 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
3600 </pre></blockquote></p>
3601
3602 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
3603 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
3604 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
3605 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
3606
3607 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
3608 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
3609 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
3610 your need.</p>
3611
3612 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
3613 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
3614 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
3615 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
3616 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
3617 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
3618 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
3619 days.</p>
3620
3621 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
3622 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
3623 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
3624 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
3625 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
3626 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
3627 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
3628 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
3629 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
3630
3631 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
3632 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
3633 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
3634
3635       </div>
3636       <div class="tags">
3637
3638
3639         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>.
3640
3641
3642       </div>
3643     </div>
3644     <div class="padding"></div>
3645
3646     <div class="entry">
3647       <div class="title">
3648         <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>
3649       </div>
3650       <div class="date">
3651         25th September 2014
3652       </div>
3653       <div class="body">
3654         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
3655 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
3656 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
3657 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
3658 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
3659 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
3660 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
3661 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
3662 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
3663 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
3664 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
3665 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
3666 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
3667
3668 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
3669 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
3670 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
3671 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
3672 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
3673 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
3674 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
3675 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
3676 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
3677 list</a>. :)</p>
3678
3679       </div>
3680       <div class="tags">
3681
3682
3683         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>.
3684
3685
3686       </div>
3687     </div>
3688     <div class="padding"></div>
3689
3690     <div class="entry">
3691       <div class="title">
3692         <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>
3693       </div>
3694       <div class="date">
3695         16th September 2014
3696       </div>
3697       <div class="body">
3698         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
3699 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
3700 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
3701 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
3702 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
3703 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
3704 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
3705 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
3706 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
3707 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
3708 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
3709 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
3710 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
3711 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
3712
3713 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
3714 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
3715 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
3716 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
3717 depend on the small and clever package
3718 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
3719 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
3720 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
3721 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3722 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3723 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3724 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3725 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3726 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3727 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3728 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3729
3730 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3731 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3732 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3733 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3734 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3735 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3736 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3737 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3738 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3739 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3740 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3741 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3742 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3743 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3744 dialog.</p>
3745
3746 <p><table>
3747
3748 <tr>
3749 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3750 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3751 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3752 <th>Reduction</th>
3753 </tr>
3754
3755 <tr>
3756 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3757 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3758 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3759 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3760 </tr>
3761
3762 <tr>
3763 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3764 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3765 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3766 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3767 </tr>
3768
3769 <tr>
3770 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3771 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3772 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3773 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3774 </tr>
3775
3776 <tr>
3777 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3778 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3779 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3780 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3781 </tr>
3782
3783 <tr>
3784 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3785 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3786 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3787 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3788 </tr>
3789
3790 </table></p>
3791
3792 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3793 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3794 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3795 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3796 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3797 installed.</p>
3798
3799 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3800 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3801 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3802 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3803 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3804 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3805 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3806 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3807 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3808 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3809 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3810 for the entire installation.</p>
3811
3812 <p>I've implemented this in the
3813 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3814 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3815 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3816 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3817 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3818
3819 <p><blockquote><pre>
3820 #!/bin/sh
3821 set -e
3822 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3823 info() {
3824     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3825 }
3826 error() {
3827     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3828 }
3829 override_install() {
3830     apt-install eatmydata || true
3831     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3832         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3833             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3834             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3835             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3836                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3837                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3838                     > /target$file.edu
3839                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3840                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3841                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3842                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3843             else
3844                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3845             fi
3846         done
3847     else
3848         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3849     fi
3850 }
3851
3852 override_install
3853 </pre></blockquote></p>
3854
3855 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3856 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3857
3858 <p><blockquote><pre>
3859 #! /bin/sh -e
3860 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3861 error() {
3862     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3863 }
3864 remove_install_override() {
3865     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3866         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3867         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3868             rm /target$file
3869             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3870                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3871             rm /target$file.edu
3872         else
3873             error "Missing divert for $file."
3874         fi
3875     done
3876     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3877 }
3878
3879 remove_install_override
3880 </pre></blockquote></p>
3881
3882 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3883 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3884 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3885
3886 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3887 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3888 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3889 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3890 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3891 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3892 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3893 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3894 everyone.</p>
3895
3896 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3897 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3898 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3899 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3900
3901 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3902 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3903 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3904 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3905 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3906
3907 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3908 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3909 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3910 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3911 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3912
3913       </div>
3914       <div class="tags">
3915
3916
3917         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>.
3918
3919
3920       </div>
3921     </div>
3922     <div class="padding"></div>
3923
3924     <div class="entry">
3925       <div class="title">
3926         <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>
3927       </div>
3928       <div class="date">
3929         10th September 2014
3930       </div>
3931       <div class="body">
3932         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3933 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3934 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3935 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3936 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3937 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3938 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3939 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3940 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3941 those problems are gone now.</p>
3942
3943 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3944 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3945 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3946 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3947 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3948
3949 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3950 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3951 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3952
3953 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3954 line:</p>
3955
3956 <p><blockquote><pre>
3957 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3958 </pre></blockquote></p>
3959
3960 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3961 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3962 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3963 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3964
3965 <p><blockquote><pre>
3966 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3967 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3968 %
3969 </pre></blockquote></p>
3970
3971 <p>Now if only
3972 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3973 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3974 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3975 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3976 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3977 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3978 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3979 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3980 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3981
3982       </div>
3983       <div class="tags">
3984
3985
3986         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>.
3987
3988
3989       </div>
3990     </div>
3991     <div class="padding"></div>
3992
3993     <div class="entry">
3994       <div class="title">
3995         <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>
3996       </div>
3997       <div class="date">
3998         17th June 2014
3999       </div>
4000       <div class="body">
4001         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4002 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
4003 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
4004 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
4005 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
4006
4007 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
4008 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
4009 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
4010 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
4011 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
4012 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
4013 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
4014 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
4015 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
4016 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
4017 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
4018 goals.</p>
4019
4020 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
4021 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
4022 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
4023 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
4024 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
4025 chapters together into one large web page (aka
4026 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
4027 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
4028 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
4029 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
4030 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
4031 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
4032 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
4033 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
4034 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
4035 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
4036 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
4037 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
4038 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
4039 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
4040 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
4041 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
4042 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
4043 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
4044
4045 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
4046 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
4047 track the English original.  For this we use the
4048 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
4049 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
4050 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
4051 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
4052 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
4053 files), which the translations update with the native language
4054 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
4055 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
4056 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
4057 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
4058 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
4059 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
4060 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
4061 of the documentation.</p>
4062
4063 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
4064 recommend using
4065 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
4066 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
4067 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
4068 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
4069 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
4070 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
4071 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
4072 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
4073
4074 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
4075 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
4076 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
4077 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
4078 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
4079 translated images by storing translated versions in
4080 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
4081 package maintainers know more.</p>
4082
4083 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
4084 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
4085 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
4086 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
4087 PDF version</a> or the
4088 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
4089 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
4090 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
4091
4092 <p>To learn more, check out
4093 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
4094 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
4095 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
4096 manual on the wiki</a> and
4097 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
4098 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
4099
4100       </div>
4101       <div class="tags">
4102
4103
4104         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>.
4105
4106
4107       </div>
4108     </div>
4109     <div class="padding"></div>
4110
4111     <div class="entry">
4112       <div class="title">
4113         <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>
4114       </div>
4115       <div class="date">
4116         23rd April 2014
4117       </div>
4118       <div class="body">
4119         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
4120 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
4121 So I implemented one, using
4122 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
4123 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
4124 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
4125 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
4126 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
4127 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
4128
4129 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
4130 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
4131 packages to install.  The first part is in
4132 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
4133 this:</p>
4134
4135 <p><blockquote><pre>
4136 Task: isenkram
4137 Section: hardware
4138 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4139  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4140  proposed.
4141 Test-new-install: mark show
4142 Relevance: 8
4143 Packages: for-current-hardware
4144 </pre></blockquote></p>
4145
4146 <p>The second part is in
4147 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
4148 this:</p>
4149
4150 <p><blockquote><pre>
4151 #!/bin/sh
4152 #
4153 (
4154     isenkram-lookup
4155     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4156 ) | sort -u
4157 </pre></blockquote></p>
4158
4159 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
4160 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
4161 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
4162 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
4163 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
4164 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
4165
4166 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
4167 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
4168 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
4169 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
4170 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
4171 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
4172 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
4173 the python-apt code (bug
4174 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
4175 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
4176 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
4177 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
4178 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
4179 unstable today.</p>
4180
4181 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
4182 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
4183 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
4184 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
4185 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
4186 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
4187 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
4188 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
4189 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
4190
4191 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
4192 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
4193 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
4194 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
4195 package.  See also
4196 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
4197 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
4198 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
4199 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
4200
4201       </div>
4202       <div class="tags">
4203
4204
4205         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>.
4206
4207
4208       </div>
4209     </div>
4210     <div class="padding"></div>
4211
4212     <div class="entry">
4213       <div class="title">
4214         <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>
4215       </div>
4216       <div class="date">
4217         15th April 2014
4218       </div>
4219       <div class="body">
4220         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4221 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
4222 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
4223 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
4224 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
4225 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
4226
4227 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
4228 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
4229 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
4230 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
4231 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
4232 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
4233 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
4234
4235 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
4236 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
4237 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
4238 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
4239 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
4240 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
4241 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
4242 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
4243 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
4244 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
4245 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
4246 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
4247
4248 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
4249 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
4250 become root:</p>
4251
4252 <p><pre>
4253 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4254   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4255   u-boot-tools
4256 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4257   freedom-maker
4258 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4259 </pre></p>
4260
4261 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4262 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
4263 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
4264 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
4265 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
4266 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
4267 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
4268 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
4269
4270 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4271 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4272 the preseed values:</p>
4273
4274 <p><pre>
4275 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4276 </pre></p>
4277
4278 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
4279 it still work.</p>
4280
4281 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
4282 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
4283 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
4284 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
4285 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
4286 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
4287 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
4288
4289 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4290 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4291 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4292 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4293 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4294 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4295
4296       </div>
4297       <div class="tags">
4298
4299
4300         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>.
4301
4302
4303       </div>
4304     </div>
4305     <div class="padding"></div>
4306
4307     <div class="entry">
4308       <div class="title">
4309         <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>
4310       </div>
4311       <div class="date">
4312          9th April 2014
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="body">
4315         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
4316 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
4317 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
4318 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
4319 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
4320 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
4321 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
4322 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
4323 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
4324 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
4325 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
4326 have looked at a system called
4327 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
4328 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
4329
4330 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
4331 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
4332 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
4333 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
4334 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
4335 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
4336 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
4337 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
4338 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
4339 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
4340 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
4341 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
4342 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
4343
4344 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
4345 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
4346 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
4347 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
4348 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
4349 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
4350 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
4351 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
4352 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
4353 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
4354 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
4355 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
4356 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
4357 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
4358 account.</p>
4359
4360 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
4361 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
4362 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
4363 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4364 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
4365 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
4366 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4367
4368 <p><blockquote><pre>
4369 [s3c]
4370 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4371 backend-login: API-login
4372 backend-password: API-password
4373 fs-passphrase: local-password
4374 </pre></blockquote></p>
4375
4376 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4377 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4378 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4379 details and password to create it:</p>
4380
4381 <p><blockquote><pre>
4382 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4383 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4384   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4385 Enter backend login:
4386 Enter backend password:
4387 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4388 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4389 Enter encryption password:
4390 Confirm encryption password:
4391 Generating random encryption key...
4392 Creating metadata tables...
4393 Dumping metadata...
4394 ..objects..
4395 ..blocks..
4396 ..inodes..
4397 ..inode_blocks..
4398 ..symlink_targets..
4399 ..names..
4400 ..contents..
4401 ..ext_attributes..
4402 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4403 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4404 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4405
4406 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4407
4408 <p><blockquote><pre>
4409 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4410   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4411 Using 4 upload threads.
4412 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4413 Reading metadata...
4414 ..objects..
4415 ..blocks..
4416 ..inodes..
4417 ..inode_blocks..
4418 ..symlink_targets..
4419 ..names..
4420 ..contents..
4421 ..ext_attributes..
4422 Mounting filesystem...
4423 # df -h /s3ql
4424 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4425 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4426 #
4427 </pre></blockquote></p>
4428
4429 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4430 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4431 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4432 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4433 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4434 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4435
4436 <p><blockquote><pre>
4437 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4438 #
4439 </pre></blockquote></p>
4440
4441 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4442 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4443 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4444 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4445 file system:</p>
4446
4447 <p><blockquote><pre>
4448 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4449 Using cached metadata.
4450 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4451 Checking DB integrity...
4452 Creating temporary extra indices...
4453 Checking lost+found...
4454 Checking cached objects...
4455 Checking names (refcounts)...
4456 Checking contents (names)...
4457 Checking contents (inodes)...
4458 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4459 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4460 Checking objects (backend)...
4461 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4462 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4463 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4464 Checking objects (sizes)...
4465 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4466 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4467 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4468 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4469 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4470 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4471 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4472 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4473 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4474 Checking directory reachability...
4475 Checking unix conventions...
4476 Checking referential integrity...
4477 Dropping temporary indices...
4478 Backing up old metadata...
4479 Dumping metadata...
4480 ..objects..
4481 ..blocks..
4482 ..inodes..
4483 ..inode_blocks..
4484 ..symlink_targets..
4485 ..names..
4486 ..contents..
4487 ..ext_attributes..
4488 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4489 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4490 #
4491 </pre></blockquote></p>
4492
4493 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4494 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4495 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4496 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4497 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4498 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4499 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4500 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4501 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4502 working set.</p>
4503
4504 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4505 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4506 busy:</p>
4507
4508 <p><blockquote><pre>
4509 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4510   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4511 Using 8 upload threads.
4512 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4513 #
4514 </pre></blockquote></p>
4515
4516 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4517 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4518 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4519 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4520 s3qlctrl:
4521
4522 <p><blockquote><pre>
4523 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4524 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4525 #
4526 </pre></blockquote></p>
4527
4528 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4529 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4530 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4531 a report:</p>
4532
4533 <p><blockquote><pre>
4534 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4535 Directory entries:    9141
4536 Inodes:               9143
4537 Data blocks:          8851
4538 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4539 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4540 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4541 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4542 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4543 #
4544 </pre></blockquote></p>
4545
4546 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4547 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4548 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4549 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4550 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4551 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4552 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4553 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4554 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4555 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4556 best.</p>
4557
4558 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4559 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4560 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4561 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4562 poster is titled
4563 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4564 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4565 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4566 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4567 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4568
4569 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4570 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4571 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4572 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4573 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4574 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4575 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4576 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4577
4578 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4579 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4580 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4581 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4582 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4583 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4584 only read from it.</p>
4585
4586 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4587 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4588 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4589
4590       </div>
4591       <div class="tags">
4592
4593
4594         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>.
4595
4596
4597       </div>
4598     </div>
4599     <div class="padding"></div>
4600
4601     <div class="entry">
4602       <div class="title">
4603         <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>
4604       </div>
4605       <div class="date">
4606         14th March 2014
4607       </div>
4608       <div class="body">
4609         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4610 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4611 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4612 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4613 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4614 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4615 release (0.2).</p>
4616
4617 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4618 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4619 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4620 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4621 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4622 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4623 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4624 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4625 and build using
4626 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4627 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4628
4629 <pre>
4630 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4631   freedom-maker
4632 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4633   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4634   u-boot-tools
4635 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4636 </pre>
4637
4638 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4639 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4640 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4641 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4642 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4643 kpartx call.</p>
4644
4645 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4646 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4647 the preseed values:</p>
4648
4649 <pre>
4650 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4651 </pre>
4652
4653 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4654 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4655 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4656 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4657 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4658 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4659
4660 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4661 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4662 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4663 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4664 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4665 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4666
4667       </div>
4668       <div class="tags">
4669
4670
4671         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>.
4672
4673
4674       </div>
4675     </div>
4676     <div class="padding"></div>
4677
4678     <div class="entry">
4679       <div class="title">
4680         <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>
4681       </div>
4682       <div class="date">
4683         22nd February 2014
4684       </div>
4685       <div class="body">
4686         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4687 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4688 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4689 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4690 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4691 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4692 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4693 proper home since then.</p>
4694
4695 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4696 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4697 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4698 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4699 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4700
4701 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4702 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4703 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4704 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4705 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4706 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4707 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4708 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4709 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4710
4711       </div>
4712       <div class="tags">
4713
4714
4715         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>.
4716
4717
4718       </div>
4719     </div>
4720     <div class="padding"></div>
4721
4722     <div class="entry">
4723       <div class="title">
4724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4725       </div>
4726       <div class="date">
4727          3rd February 2014
4728       </div>
4729       <div class="body">
4730         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4731 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4732 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4733 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4734 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4735 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4736 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4737 <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>,
4738 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4739
4740 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4741 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4742 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4743 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4744 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4745 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4746
4747 <p><blockquote><pre>
4748 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4749 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4750 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4751 dhclient /dev/eth0
4752 </pre></blockquote></p>
4753
4754 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4755 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4756 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4757
4758 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4759 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4760 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4761 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4762 side.</p>
4763
4764 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4765 stuff:</p>
4766
4767 <p><blockquote><pre>
4768 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4769 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4770 EOF
4771 apt-get update
4772 apt-get dist-upgrade
4773 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4774     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4775 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4776 </pre></blockquote></p>
4777
4778 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4779 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4780 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4781 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4782 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4783 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4784 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4785 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4786 ssh instead.
4787
4788 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4789 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4790 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4791 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4792 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4793 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4794
4795 <p><blockquote><pre>
4796 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4797 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4798 EOF
4799 </pre></blockquote></p>
4800
4801 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4802 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4803 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4804 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4805
4806 <p><blockquote><pre>
4807 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4808 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4809 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4810 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4811 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4812 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4813 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4814 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4815 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4816 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4817 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4818 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4819 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4820 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4821 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4822 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4823 #
4824 </pre></blockquote></p>
4825
4826 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4827 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4828 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4829 command line stuff.<p>
4830
4831       </div>
4832       <div class="tags">
4833
4834
4835         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>.
4836
4837
4838       </div>
4839     </div>
4840     <div class="padding"></div>
4841
4842     <div class="entry">
4843       <div class="title">
4844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
4845       </div>
4846       <div class="date">
4847         14th January 2014
4848       </div>
4849       <div class="body">
4850         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
4851 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
4852 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
4853 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
4854 the source.  The company behind it provide
4855 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
4856 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
4857 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
4858 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
4859 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
4860 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
4861 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
4862 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
4863 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
4864 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
4865 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
4866 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
4867 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
4868 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
4869 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
4870 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
4871 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
4872 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
4873 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
4874
4875 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
4876
4877 <ul>
4878
4879   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
4880   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
4881   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
4882
4883 </ul>
4884
4885 <p>You can
4886 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4887 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4888 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4889 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4890 include a test suite check.</p>
4891
4892       </div>
4893       <div class="tags">
4894
4895
4896         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>.
4897
4898
4899       </div>
4900     </div>
4901     <div class="padding"></div>
4902
4903     <div class="entry">
4904       <div class="title">
4905         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
4906       </div>
4907       <div class="date">
4908         24th November 2013
4909       </div>
4910       <div class="body">
4911         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
4912 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
4913 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
4914 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
4915 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
4916 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
4917 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
4918 is working on.  I checked the
4919 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
4920 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
4921 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
4922 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
4923 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
4924 These are the release notes:</p>
4925
4926 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
4927
4928 <ul>
4929
4930   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
4931    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
4932    up.</li>
4933
4934   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
4935
4936   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
4937    Matthias Klose.</li>
4938
4939   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
4940    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
4941
4942   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
4943    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
4944    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
4945
4946 </ul>
4947
4948 <p>You can
4949 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4950 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4951 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4952 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4953 include a testsuite check.</p>
4954
4955       </div>
4956       <div class="tags">
4957
4958
4959         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>.
4960
4961
4962       </div>
4963     </div>
4964     <div class="padding"></div>
4965
4966     <div class="entry">
4967       <div class="title">
4968         <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>
4969       </div>
4970       <div class="date">
4971          2nd November 2013
4972       </div>
4973       <div class="body">
4974         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4975 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4976 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4977 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4978 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4979
4980 <p><pre>
4981 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4982 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4983 # Provides:          rsyslog
4984 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4985 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4986 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4987 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4988 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4989 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4990 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4991 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4992 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4993 ### END INIT INFO
4994 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4995 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4996 </pre></p>
4997
4998 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4999 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5000 info/comments.</p>
5001
5002 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5003 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5004
5005 <p><pre>
5006 #!/bin/sh
5007
5008 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5009 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5010 # and status_of_proc is working.
5011 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5012
5013 #
5014 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5015
5016 #
5017 do_start()
5018 {
5019         # Return
5020         #   0 if daemon has been started
5021         #   1 if daemon was already running
5022         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5023         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5024                 || return 1
5025         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5026                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5027                 || return 2
5028         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5029         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5030         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5031 }
5032
5033 #
5034 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5035 #
5036 do_stop()
5037 {
5038         # Return
5039         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5040         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5041         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5042         #   other if a failure occurred
5043         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5044         RETVAL="$?"
5045         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5046         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5047         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5048         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5049         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5050         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5051         # sleep for some time.
5052         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5053         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5054         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5055         rm -f $PIDFILE
5056         return "$RETVAL"
5057 }
5058
5059 #
5060 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5061 #
5062 do_reload() {
5063         #
5064         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5065         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5066         # then implement that here.
5067         #
5068         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5069         return 0
5070 }
5071
5072 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5073 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5074 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5075 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5076     script="$1"
5077     shift
5078     . $script
5079 else
5080     exit 0
5081 fi
5082
5083 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5084 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5085
5086 # Exit if the package is not installed
5087 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5088
5089 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5090 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5091
5092 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5093 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5094
5095 case "$1" in
5096   start)
5097         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5098         do_start
5099         case "$?" in
5100                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5101                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5102         esac
5103         ;;
5104   stop)
5105         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5106         do_stop
5107         case "$?" in
5108                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5109                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5110         esac
5111         ;;
5112   status)
5113         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5114         ;;
5115   #reload|force-reload)
5116         #
5117         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5118         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5119         #
5120         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5121         #do_reload
5122         #log_end_msg $?
5123         #;;
5124   restart|force-reload)
5125         #
5126         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5127         # 'force-reload' alias
5128         #
5129         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5130         do_stop
5131         case "$?" in
5132           0|1)
5133                 do_start
5134                 case "$?" in
5135                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
5136                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
5137                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
5138                 esac
5139                 ;;
5140           *)
5141                 # Failed to stop
5142                 log_end_msg 1
5143                 ;;
5144         esac
5145         ;;
5146   *)
5147         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
5148         exit 3
5149         ;;
5150 esac
5151
5152 :
5153 </pre></p>
5154
5155 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
5156 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
5157 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
5158 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
5159
5160 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
5161 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
5162 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
5163 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
5164 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
5165
5166       </div>
5167       <div class="tags">
5168
5169
5170         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>.
5171
5172
5173       </div>
5174     </div>
5175     <div class="padding"></div>
5176
5177     <div class="entry">
5178       <div class="title">
5179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
5180       </div>
5181       <div class="date">
5182          1st November 2013
5183       </div>
5184       <div class="body">
5185         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
5186 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5187 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5188 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5189 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5190 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
5191 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5192 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5193 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
5194 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
5195 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
5196 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
5197
5198 <p>The source is now available from
5199 <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>
5200
5201       </div>
5202       <div class="tags">
5203
5204
5205         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>.
5206
5207
5208       </div>
5209     </div>
5210     <div class="padding"></div>
5211
5212     <div class="entry">
5213       <div class="title">
5214         <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>
5215       </div>
5216       <div class="date">
5217         27th October 2013
5218       </div>
5219       <div class="body">
5220         <p>The
5221 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
5222 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
5223 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
5224 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
5225 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
5226 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
5227 of a plan to simplify the build system for
5228 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
5229 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
5230 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
5231 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
5232 Raspberry Pi.</p>
5233
5234 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
5235 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
5236 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
5237 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
5238 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
5239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
5240 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
5241 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
5242 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
5243 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
5244 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
5245 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
5246 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
5247 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
5248 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
5249 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
5250 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
5251 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
5252 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
5253 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
5254 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
5255 available from
5256 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
5257 upstream project page</a>.</p>
5258
5259 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
5260 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
5261 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
5262 list:</p>
5263
5264 <p><pre>
5265 #!/bin/sh
5266 set -e # Exit on first error
5267 rootdir="$1"
5268 cd "$rootdir"
5269 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
5270 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
5271 EOF
5272 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
5273 # install a kernel somewhere too.
5274 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
5275     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5276 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5277 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
5278 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
5279 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
5280 </pre></p>
5281
5282 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
5283 to build the image:</p>
5284
5285 <pre>
5286 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
5287     --variant minbase \
5288     --arch armel \
5289     --distribution jessie \
5290     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
5291     --image test.img \
5292     --size 600M \
5293     --bootsize 64M \
5294     --boottype vfat \
5295     --log-level debug \
5296     --verbose \
5297     --no-kernel \
5298     --no-extlinux \
5299     --root-password raspberry \
5300     --hostname raspberrypi \
5301     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
5302     --customize `pwd`/customize \
5303     --package netbase \
5304     --package git-core \
5305     --package binutils \
5306     --package ca-certificates \
5307     --package wget \
5308     --package kmod
5309 </pre></p>
5310
5311 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
5312 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
5313 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
5314 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
5315 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
5316 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
5317 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
5318
5319 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
5320 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
5321 build dependency list.</p>
5322
5323 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
5324 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
5325 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
5326 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
5327
5328       </div>
5329       <div class="tags">
5330
5331
5332         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>.
5333
5334
5335       </div>
5336     </div>
5337     <div class="padding"></div>
5338
5339     <div class="entry">
5340       <div class="title">
5341         <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>
5342       </div>
5343       <div class="date">
5344         15th October 2013
5345       </div>
5346       <div class="body">
5347         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
5348 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
5349 these. :)</p>
5350
5351 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
5352 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
5353 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
5354 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
5355 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
5356 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
5357 hope you will to. :)</p>
5358
5359 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
5360 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
5361 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
5362 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
5363 donated.  Are you next?</p>
5364
5365 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
5366 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
5367 statement under the heading
5368 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
5369 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
5370 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
5371 too.</p>
5372
5373       </div>
5374       <div class="tags">
5375
5376
5377         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>.
5378
5379
5380       </div>
5381     </div>
5382     <div class="padding"></div>
5383
5384     <div class="entry">
5385       <div class="title">
5386         <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>
5387       </div>
5388       <div class="date">
5389         27th September 2013
5390       </div>
5391       <div class="body">
5392         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
5393 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
5394 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
5395 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
5396
5397 <ul>
5398
5399 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
5400 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
5401
5402 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
5403 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5404
5405 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
5406 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
5407 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
5408 (Youtube)</li>
5409
5410 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
5411 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
5412
5413 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
5414 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5415
5416 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
5417 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
5418 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
5419
5420 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
5421 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
5422 (Youtube)</li>
5423
5424 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
5425 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
5426
5427 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
5428 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
5429
5430 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
5431 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
5432 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
5433
5434 </ul>
5435
5436 <p>A larger list is available from
5437 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
5438 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
5439
5440 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
5441 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
5442 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
5443 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
5444 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
5445 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
5446 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
5447 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
5448 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
5449 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5450 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5451
5452       </div>
5453       <div class="tags">
5454
5455
5456         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>.
5457
5458
5459       </div>
5460     </div>
5461     <div class="padding"></div>
5462
5463     <div class="entry">
5464       <div class="title">
5465         <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>
5466       </div>
5467       <div class="date">
5468         10th September 2013
5469       </div>
5470       <div class="body">
5471         <p>I was introduced to the
5472 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5473 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5474 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5475 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5476 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5477 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5478 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5479 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5480
5481 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5482 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5483 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5484 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5485 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5486
5487 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5488 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5489 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5490 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5491 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5492 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5493 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5494 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5495 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5496 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5497 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5498 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5499 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5500 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5501 missing in Debian).</p>
5502
5503 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5504 scripts
5505 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5506 and a administrative web interface
5507 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5508 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5509 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5510 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5511 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5512 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5513 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5514 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5515 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5516 this is really working yet, see
5517 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5518 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5519 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5520 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5521 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5522 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5523 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5524
5525 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5526 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5527 at.</p>
5528
5529 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5530
5531 <ol>
5532
5533 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5534 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5535 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5536 to the Debian installer:<p>
5537 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5538
5539 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5540 install on.</li>
5541
5542 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5543 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5544
5545 </ol>
5546
5547 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5548
5549 <ol>
5550
5551 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5552 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5553 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5554 <pre>
5555 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5556 </pre></li>
5557 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5558 <pre>
5559 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5560    apt-key add -
5561 apt-get update
5562 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5563 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5564 </pre></li>
5565 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5566
5567 </ol>
5568
5569 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5570 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5571 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5572 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5573 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5574
5575 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5576 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5577 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5578 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5579
5580 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5581 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5582 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5583 irc.debian.org and the
5584 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5585 mailing list</a>.</p>
5586
5587 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5588 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5589 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5590 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5591 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5592 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5593
5594       </div>
5595       <div class="tags">
5596
5597
5598         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>.
5599
5600
5601       </div>
5602     </div>
5603     <div class="padding"></div>
5604
5605     <div class="entry">
5606       <div class="title">
5607         <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>
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="date">
5610         18th August 2013
5611       </div>
5612       <div class="body">
5613         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5614 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5615 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5616 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5617 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5618 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5619 currently on the disk.</p>
5620
5621 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5622 <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>
5623 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5624 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5625 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5626 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5627 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5628 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5629 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5630 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5631 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5632 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5633 the broken disks.</p>
5634
5635       </div>
5636       <div class="tags">
5637
5638
5639         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>.
5640
5641
5642       </div>
5643     </div>
5644     <div class="padding"></div>
5645
5646     <div class="entry">
5647       <div class="title">
5648         <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>
5649       </div>
5650       <div class="date">
5651         17th July 2013
5652       </div>
5653       <div class="body">
5654         <p>Today I switched to
5655 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5656 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
5657 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5658 <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
5659 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5660 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5661 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5662 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5663 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
5664 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5665 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5666 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5667 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5668 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5669 station from now on.</p>
5670
5671 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5672 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5673 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
5674 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5675 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5676 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
5677 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5678 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5679 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5680 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5681 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5682 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5683
5684 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5685 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
5686 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5687 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5688 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
5689 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
5690 parameters are tuned:</p>
5691
5692 <ul>
5693
5694 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5695     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
5696
5697 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5698     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5699     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
5700
5701 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5702     systems.</li>
5703
5704 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5705     /etc/fstab.</li>
5706
5707 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
5708
5709 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5710     cron.daily).</li>
5711
5712 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5713     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
5714
5715 </ul>
5716
5717 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5718 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5719 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5720 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5721 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5722 from getting the data on the disk (see
5723 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
5724 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5725 right thing to do.</p>
5726
5727 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5728 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5729 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
5730
5731 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5732 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5733 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5734 instead of during my work.</p>
5735
5736 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5737 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
5738
5739 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
5740 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5741 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
5742
5743 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5744 there.</p>
5745
5746 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5747 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5748 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5749 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5750 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5751 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5752 back.</p>
5753
5754       </div>
5755       <div class="tags">
5756
5757
5758         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>.
5759
5760
5761       </div>
5762     </div>
5763     <div class="padding"></div>
5764
5765     <div class="entry">
5766       <div class="title">
5767         <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>
5768       </div>
5769       <div class="date">
5770         10th July 2013
5771       </div>
5772       <div class="body">
5773         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5774 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5775 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
5776 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5777 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
5778 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
5779 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
5780 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
5781
5782 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5783 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
5784 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
5785 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5786 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5787 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
5788 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
5789 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
5790 lock up when I download a new
5791 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
5792 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5793 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
5794
5795 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5796 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5797 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5798 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5799 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5800 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5801
5802 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5803 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
5804 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5805 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5806 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5807 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5808
5809 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5810 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
5811 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5812 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5813 exist).</p>
5814
5815       </div>
5816       <div class="tags">
5817
5818
5819         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>.
5820
5821
5822       </div>
5823     </div>
5824     <div class="padding"></div>
5825
5826     <div class="entry">
5827       <div class="title">
5828         <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>
5829       </div>
5830       <div class="date">
5831          9th July 2013
5832       </div>
5833       <div class="body">
5834         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
5835 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5836 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
5837 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
5838 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5839 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5840 Bitraf</a>.</p>
5841
5842 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
5843 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
5844 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
5845 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5846 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
5847
5848       </div>
5849       <div class="tags">
5850
5851
5852         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>.
5853
5854
5855       </div>
5856     </div>
5857     <div class="padding"></div>
5858
5859     <div class="entry">
5860       <div class="title">
5861         <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>
5862       </div>
5863       <div class="date">
5864          5th July 2013
5865       </div>
5866       <div class="body">
5867         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5868 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5869 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
5870 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5871 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
5872 ended up picking a
5873 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
5874 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5875 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
5876 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
5877 on that below.</p>
5878
5879 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5880 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5881 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5882 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5883 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5884 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5885 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5886 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
5887 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
5888
5889 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5890 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5891 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5892 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
5893 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5894 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5895 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
5896
5897 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
5898 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
5899
5900 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
5901 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5902 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5903 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5904 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5905 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
5906 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5907 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5908 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
5909 kernel developers as
5910 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5911 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
5912 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5913 Lenovo forums, both for
5914 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5915 2012-11-10</a> and for
5916 <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
5917 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
5918 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5919 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5920 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5921 There is even a
5922 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5923 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5924 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
5925
5926 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5927 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
5928 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5929 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5930 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
5931 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5932 fixed. :)</p>
5933
5934       </div>
5935       <div class="tags">
5936
5937
5938         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>.
5939
5940
5941       </div>
5942     </div>
5943     <div class="padding"></div>
5944
5945     <div class="entry">
5946       <div class="title">
5947         <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>
5948       </div>
5949       <div class="date">
5950          4th July 2013
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="body">
5953         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5954 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5955 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5956 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5957 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5958 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5959 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5960 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5961 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5962
5963 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5964 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5965 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5966 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5967 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5968 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5969 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5970
5971 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5972 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5973 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5974 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5975 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5976 new laptop now. :)</p>
5977
5978 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5979
5980       </div>
5981       <div class="tags">
5982
5983
5984         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>.
5985
5986
5987       </div>
5988     </div>
5989     <div class="padding"></div>
5990
5991     <div class="entry">
5992       <div class="title">
5993         <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>
5994       </div>
5995       <div class="date">
5996         25th June 2013
5997       </div>
5998       <div class="body">
5999         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6000 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6001 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6002 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
6003 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6004 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
6005 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
6006 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6007 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6008 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6009 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
6010
6011 <p><pre>
6012 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6013 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6014 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6015 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6016 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6017 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6018 firmware-ipw2x00
6019 firmware-ipw2x00
6020 Preconfiguring packages ...
6021 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6022 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6023 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6024 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
6025 #
6026 </pre></p>
6027
6028 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6029 printed instead:</p>
6030
6031 <p><pre>
6032 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6033 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
6034 #
6035 </pre></p>
6036
6037 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6038 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
6039
6040 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
6041 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
6042 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
6043 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
6044 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
6045 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
6046 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
6047 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
6048 machine.</p>
6049
6050 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
6051 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
6052 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
6053 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
6054 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
6055 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
6056
6057       </div>
6058       <div class="tags">
6059
6060
6061         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>.
6062
6063
6064       </div>
6065     </div>
6066     <div class="padding"></div>
6067
6068     <div class="entry">
6069       <div class="title">
6070         <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>
6071       </div>
6072       <div class="date">
6073         11th June 2013
6074       </div>
6075       <div class="body">
6076         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
6077 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
6078 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
6079 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
6080 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
6081 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
6082 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
6083 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
6084 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
6085 i915 driver used by the
6086 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6087 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
6088
6089 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
6090 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
6091 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
6092 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
6093 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
6094
6095 <pre>
6096 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
6097 update-initramfs -u -k all
6098 </pre>
6099
6100 <p>Since March 2012 there is
6101 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
6102 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
6103 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
6104 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
6105 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
6106 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
6107 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
6108 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
6109 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
6110 number.</p>
6111
6112 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
6113 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
6114
6115 <p><pre>
6116 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
6117     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
6118     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
6119  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
6120  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
6121     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
6122  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
6123     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
6124  Latency: 0
6125  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
6126  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
6127  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
6128  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
6129  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
6130  Capabilities: <access denied>
6131  Kernel driver in use: i915
6132 </pre></p>
6133
6134 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
6135
6136 <p><pre>
6137 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
6138        ...
6139         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
6140         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
6141        ...
6142 }
6143 </pre></p>
6144
6145 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
6146 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
6147 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
6148 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
6149 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
6150 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
6151 yet shown up in
6152 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
6153 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
6154 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
6155 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
6156 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
6157 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
6158
6159 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
6160 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
6161 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
6162 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
6163 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
6164 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
6165 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
6166 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
6167 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
6168 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
6169 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
6170 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
6171
6172 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
6173 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
6174 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
6175 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
6176 backlight.</p>
6177
6178       </div>
6179       <div class="tags">
6180
6181
6182         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>.
6183
6184
6185       </div>
6186     </div>
6187     <div class="padding"></div>
6188
6189     <div class="entry">
6190       <div class="title">
6191         <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>
6192       </div>
6193       <div class="date">
6194         27th May 2013
6195       </div>
6196       <div class="body">
6197         <p>Two days ago, I asked
6198 <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
6199 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
6200 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
6201 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
6202 and Windows 8.</p>
6203
6204 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
6205 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
6206 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
6207 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
6208 enough to tell.</p>
6209
6210 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
6211 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
6212 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
6213 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
6214 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
6215 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
6216 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
6217 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
6218 to follow.</p>
6219
6220 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
6221 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
6222 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
6223 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
6224 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
6225 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
6226 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
6227 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
6228
6229 <p>I've updated the
6230 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
6231 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
6232 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
6233 machine.</p>
6234
6235 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
6236 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
6237
6238       </div>
6239       <div class="tags">
6240
6241
6242         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>.
6243
6244
6245       </div>
6246     </div>
6247     <div class="padding"></div>
6248
6249     <div class="entry">
6250       <div class="title">
6251         <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>
6252       </div>
6253       <div class="date">
6254         25th May 2013
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="body">
6257         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
6258 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
6259 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
6260 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
6261 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
6262 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
6263
6264 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
6265 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
6266 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
6267 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
6268 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
6269 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
6270 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
6271 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
6272 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
6273 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
6274
6275 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
6276 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6277 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
6278 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
6279 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
6280 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
6281
6282 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
6283 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
6284 on new Laptops?</p>
6285
6286       </div>
6287       <div class="tags">
6288
6289
6290         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>.
6291
6292
6293       </div>
6294     </div>
6295     <div class="padding"></div>
6296
6297     <div class="entry">
6298       <div class="title">
6299         <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>
6300       </div>
6301       <div class="date">
6302         17th May 2013
6303       </div>
6304       <div class="body">
6305         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
6306 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
6307 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
6308 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
6309 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
6310 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
6311 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
6312 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
6313 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
6314 donate some money</a>.
6315
6316 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
6317 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
6318 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
6319 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
6320 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
6321
6322 <p>The script,
6323 <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/>
6324 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
6325 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
6326 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
6327
6328 <ol>
6329
6330 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
6331 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
6332 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
6333     our configuration.</li>
6334 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
6335     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
6336     according to the profile specified in the config above,
6337     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
6338 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
6339     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
6340 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
6341
6342 </ol>
6343
6344 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
6345 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
6346 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
6347 the needed packages.</p>
6348
6349 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
6350 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
6351 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
6352 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
6353 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
6354 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
6355
6356 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
6357 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
6358 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
6359
6360 <p><pre>
6361 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
6362 DESKTOP="lxde"
6363 </pre></p>
6364
6365 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
6366 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
6367 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
6368 boot.</p>
6369
6370       </div>
6371       <div class="tags">
6372
6373
6374         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>.
6375
6376
6377       </div>
6378     </div>
6379     <div class="padding"></div>
6380
6381     <div class="entry">
6382       <div class="title">
6383         <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>
6384       </div>
6385       <div class="date">
6386         11th May 2013
6387       </div>
6388       <div class="body">
6389         <P>In January,
6390 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
6391 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
6392 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6393 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
6394 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
6395 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
6396 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
6397 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
6398 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6399 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
6400 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
6401 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
6402
6403 <p><table>
6404 <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>
6405 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
6406 <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>
6407 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
6408 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
6409 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
6410 <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>
6411 <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>
6412 <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>
6413 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
6414 </table></p>
6415
6416 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6417 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
6418 available in experimental.</p>
6419
6420 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6421 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6422 for LEGO designers.</p>
6423
6424       </div>
6425       <div class="tags">
6426
6427
6428         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>.
6429
6430
6431       </div>
6432     </div>
6433     <div class="padding"></div>
6434
6435     <div class="entry">
6436       <div class="title">
6437         <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>
6438       </div>
6439       <div class="date">
6440          5th May 2013
6441       </div>
6442       <div class="body">
6443         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6444 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
6445 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
6446 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
6447 soon.</p>
6448
6449 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
6450 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
6451 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
6452 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
6453 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
6454 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
6455 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
6456 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
6457 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
6458 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
6459 Edu.</a>
6460
6461 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
6462 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
6463 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
6464 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
6465 follow.<p>
6466
6467       </div>
6468       <div class="tags">
6469
6470
6471         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>.
6472
6473
6474       </div>
6475     </div>
6476     <div class="padding"></div>
6477
6478     <div class="entry">
6479       <div class="title">
6480         <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>
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="date">
6483          3rd April 2013
6484       </div>
6485       <div class="body">
6486         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
6487 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
6488 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
6489 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
6490
6491 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
6492 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
6493 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
6494 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
6495 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
6496 BTS. :)</p>
6497
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="tags">
6500
6501
6502         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>.
6503
6504
6505       </div>
6506     </div>
6507     <div class="padding"></div>
6508
6509     <div class="entry">
6510       <div class="title">
6511         <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>
6512       </div>
6513       <div class="date">
6514          2nd February 2013
6515       </div>
6516       <div class="body">
6517         <p>My
6518 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
6519 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
6520 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
6521 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6522 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
6523 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
6524 version too.</p>
6525
6526 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
6527 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
6528 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
6529 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
6530 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
6531 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
6532 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
6533 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
6534
6535 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
6536 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
6537 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
6538 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
6539 it. :)</p>
6540
6541 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6542 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6543 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6544
6545       </div>
6546       <div class="tags">
6547
6548
6549         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>.
6550
6551
6552       </div>
6553     </div>
6554     <div class="padding"></div>
6555
6556     <div class="entry">
6557       <div class="title">
6558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
6559       </div>
6560       <div class="date">
6561         22nd January 2013
6562       </div>
6563       <div class="body">
6564         <p>Yesterday, I
6565 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
6566 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
6567 pluggable hardware devices, which I
6568 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
6569 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
6570 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
6571 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
6572 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
6573 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
6574 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
6575 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
6576 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
6577 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
6578
6579 <pre>
6580 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
6581 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
6582 </pre>
6583
6584 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
6585 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
6586 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
6587 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
6588
6589 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
6590 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
6591 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
6592 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
6593 word.</p>
6594
6595 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
6596 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
6597 process.</p>
6598
6599 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
6600 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
6601
6602       </div>
6603       <div class="tags">
6604
6605
6606         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>.
6607
6608
6609       </div>
6610     </div>
6611     <div class="padding"></div>
6612
6613     <div class="entry">
6614       <div class="title">
6615         <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>
6616       </div>
6617       <div class="date">
6618         21st January 2013
6619       </div>
6620       <div class="body">
6621         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
6622 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
6623 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
6624 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
6625 it, fetch the
6626 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
6627 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
6628 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
6629 autostart script.</p>
6630
6631 <p>The design is simple:</p>
6632
6633 <ul>
6634
6635 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
6636 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
6637
6638 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
6639 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
6640 initially did.</li>
6641
6642 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
6643 the APT database, a database
6644 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
6645 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
6646
6647 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
6648 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
6649 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
6650 package or packages.</li>
6651
6652 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
6653 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
6654
6655 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
6656 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
6657
6658 </ul>
6659
6660 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
6661 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
6662 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
6663 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
6664
6665 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
6666 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
6667 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
6668 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
6669 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
6670
6671 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6672 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
6673 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6674 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6675 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6676 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6677 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6678 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
6679
6680 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6681 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6682 '<tt>svn checkout
6683 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6684 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
6685 devscripts package.</p>
6686
6687 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
6688 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
6689 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
6690 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
6691 instructions</a> for details.</p>
6692
6693       </div>
6694       <div class="tags">
6695
6696
6697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6698
6699
6700       </div>
6701     </div>
6702     <div class="padding"></div>
6703
6704     <div class="entry">
6705       <div class="title">
6706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
6707       </div>
6708       <div class="date">
6709         19th January 2013
6710       </div>
6711       <div class="body">
6712         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
6713 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
6714 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
6715 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
6716 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
6717 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
6718 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
6719 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
6720 not a durable solution.
6721
6722 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
6723 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
6724
6725 <ul>
6726
6727 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
6728   than A4).</li>
6729 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
6730 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
6731 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
6732 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
6733 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
6734 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
6735 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
6736 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
6737 size).</li>
6738 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
6739   X.org packages.</li>
6740 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
6741   the time).
6742
6743 </ul>
6744
6745 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
6746 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
6747 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
6748 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
6749 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
6750 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
6751 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
6752 still be useful.</p>
6753
6754 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
6755 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
6756 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
6757 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
6758 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
6759 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
6760
6761       </div>
6762       <div class="tags">
6763
6764
6765         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>.
6766
6767
6768       </div>
6769     </div>
6770     <div class="padding"></div>
6771
6772     <div class="entry">
6773       <div class="title">
6774         <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>
6775       </div>
6776       <div class="date">
6777         18th January 2013
6778       </div>
6779       <div class="body">
6780         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
6781 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
6782 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
6783 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
6784 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
6785 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
6786 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
6787
6788 <pre>
6789 #!/usr/bin/python
6790 import sys
6791 import apt
6792 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6793     cache = apt.Cache()
6794     cache.open(None)
6795     thepkgs = []
6796     for pkg in cache:
6797         version = pkg.candidate
6798         if version is None:
6799             version = pkg.installed
6800         if version is None:
6801             continue
6802         record = version.record
6803         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
6804             continue
6805         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
6806         for t in mime_types:
6807             t = t.rstrip().strip()
6808             if t == mimetype:
6809                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
6810     return thepkgs
6811 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
6812 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
6813     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
6814 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
6815 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6816     print "  %s" %pkg
6817 </pre>
6818
6819 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
6820
6821 <pre>
6822 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
6823 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
6824   gecko-mediaplayer
6825 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
6826 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
6827   browser-plugin-gnash
6828 %
6829 </pre>
6830
6831 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
6832 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
6833 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
6834 anyone working on adding it?</p>
6835
6836 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
6837 request for icweasel support for this feature is
6838 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
6839 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
6840 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
6841 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
6842
6843       </div>
6844       <div class="tags">
6845
6846
6847         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>.
6848
6849
6850       </div>
6851     </div>
6852     <div class="padding"></div>
6853
6854     <div class="entry">
6855       <div class="title">
6856         <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>
6857       </div>
6858       <div class="date">
6859         16th January 2013
6860       </div>
6861       <div class="body">
6862         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
6863 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
6864 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
6865 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
6866 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
6867 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
6868 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
6869 downloaded by the browser.</p>
6870
6871 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
6872 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
6873 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
6874 can be found on the
6875 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
6876 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
6877 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
6878 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
6879 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
6880
6881 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
6882
6883 <pre>
6884   count MIME type
6885   ----- -----------------------
6886      32 text/plain
6887      30 audio/mpeg
6888      29 image/png
6889      28 image/jpeg
6890      27 application/ogg
6891      26 audio/x-mp3
6892      25 image/tiff
6893      25 image/gif
6894      22 image/bmp
6895      22 audio/x-wav
6896      20 audio/x-flac
6897      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6898      18 video/x-ms-asf
6899      18 audio/x-musepack
6900      18 audio/x-mpeg
6901      18 application/x-ogg
6902      17 video/mpeg
6903      17 audio/x-scpls
6904      17 audio/ogg
6905      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6906 </pre>
6907
6908 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
6909
6910 <pre>
6911   count MIME type
6912   ----- -----------------------
6913      33 text/plain
6914      32 image/png
6915      32 image/jpeg
6916      29 audio/mpeg
6917      27 image/gif
6918      26 image/tiff
6919      26 application/ogg
6920      25 audio/x-mp3
6921      22 image/bmp
6922      21 audio/x-wav
6923      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6924      19 audio/x-mpeg
6925      18 video/mpeg
6926      18 audio/x-scpls
6927      18 audio/x-flac
6928      18 application/x-ogg
6929      17 video/x-ms-asf
6930      17 text/html
6931      17 audio/x-musepack
6932      16 image/x-xbitmap
6933 </pre>
6934
6935 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
6936
6937 <pre>
6938   count MIME type
6939   ----- -----------------------
6940      31 text/plain
6941      31 image/png
6942      31 image/jpeg
6943      29 audio/mpeg
6944      28 application/ogg
6945      27 image/gif
6946      26 image/tiff
6947      26 audio/x-mp3
6948      23 audio/x-wav
6949      22 image/bmp
6950      21 audio/x-flac
6951      20 audio/x-mpegurl
6952      19 audio/x-mpeg
6953      18 video/x-ms-asf
6954      18 video/mpeg
6955      18 audio/x-scpls
6956      18 application/x-ogg
6957      17 audio/x-musepack
6958      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6959      16 video/x-msvideo
6960 </pre>
6961
6962 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
6963 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
6964 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
6965 issues.</p>
6966
6967 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
6968 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
6969
6970       </div>
6971       <div class="tags">
6972
6973
6974         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>.
6975
6976
6977       </div>
6978     </div>
6979     <div class="padding"></div>
6980
6981     <div class="entry">
6982       <div class="title">
6983         <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>
6984       </div>
6985       <div class="date">
6986         15th January 2013
6987       </div>
6988       <div class="body">
6989         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
6990 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
6991 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
6992 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
6993 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
6994 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
6995 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
6996 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
6997 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
6998 packages.</p>
6999
7000 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
7001 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
7002 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
7003 modalias.</p>
7004
7005 <p><blockquote>
7006 Package: package-name
7007 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
7008 </blockquote></p>
7009
7010 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
7011 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
7012
7013 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
7014 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
7015
7016 <p><blockquote>
7017 Package: cheese
7018 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
7019 </blockquote></p>
7020
7021 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
7022 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
7023
7024 <p><blockquote>
7025 Package: pcmciautils
7026 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
7027 </blockquote></p>
7028
7029 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
7030 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
7031
7032 <p><blockquote>
7033 Package: colorhug-client
7034 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
7035 </blockquote></p>
7036
7037 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
7038 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
7039 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
7040
7041 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
7042 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
7043 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
7044 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
7045 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
7046 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
7047 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
7048 Raring.</p>
7049
7050 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
7051 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
7052 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
7053 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
7054 try the
7055 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
7056 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
7057 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
7058 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
7059
7060 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
7061 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
7062
7063 <p><blockquote>
7064 % ./hw-support-lookup
7065 <br>yubikey-personalization
7066 <br>%
7067 </blockquote></p>
7068
7069 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
7070 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
7071
7072 <p><blockquote>
7073 % ./hw-support-lookup
7074 <br>pcmciautils
7075 <br>%
7076 </blockquote></p>
7077
7078 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
7079 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
7080 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
7081
7082 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
7083 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
7084 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
7085 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
7086 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
7087 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
7088 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
7089 see if it work.</p>
7090
7091 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7092 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7093 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7094 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
7095
7096       </div>
7097       <div class="tags">
7098
7099
7100         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>.
7101
7102
7103       </div>
7104     </div>
7105     <div class="padding"></div>
7106
7107     <div class="entry">
7108       <div class="title">
7109         <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>
7110       </div>
7111       <div class="date">
7112         14th January 2013
7113       </div>
7114       <div class="body">
7115         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
7116 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
7117 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
7118 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
7119 in
7120 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7121 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
7122
7123 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
7124
7125 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
7126 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
7127 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
7128 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
7129 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
7130 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
7131
7132 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
7133 this shell script:</p>
7134
7135 <pre>
7136 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
7137 </pre>
7138
7139 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
7140 using modinfo:</p>
7141
7142 <pre>
7143 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
7144 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
7145 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
7146 %
7147 </pre>
7148
7149 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
7150
7151 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
7152 Bridge memory controller:</p>
7153
7154 <p><blockquote>
7155 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
7156 </blockquote></p>
7157
7158 <p>This represent these values:</p>
7159
7160 <pre>
7161  v   00008086  (vendor)
7162  d   00002770  (device)
7163  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
7164  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
7165  bc  06        (bus class)
7166  sc  00        (bus subclass)
7167  i   00        (interface)
7168 </pre>
7169
7170 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
7171 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
7172 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
7173 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
7174
7175 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
7176 means.</p>
7177
7178 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
7179
7180 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
7181 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
7182
7183 <p><blockquote>
7184 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
7185 </blockquote></p>
7186
7187 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
7188
7189 <pre>
7190  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
7191  p    0001  (device product)
7192  d    0206  (bcddevice)
7193  dc     09  (device class)
7194  dsc    00  (device subclass)
7195  dp     00  (device protocol)
7196  ic     09  (interface class)
7197  isc    00  (interface subclass)
7198  ip     00  (interface protocol)
7199 </pre>
7200
7201 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
7202 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
7203 these alias entries show up:</p>
7204
7205 <p><blockquote>
7206 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
7207 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
7208 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
7209 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
7210 </blockquote></p>
7211
7212 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
7213 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
7214 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
7215
7216 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
7217
7218 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
7219 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
7220
7221 <p><blockquote>
7222 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7223 </blockquote></p>
7224
7225 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
7226
7227 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
7228
7229 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
7230 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
7231 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
7232
7233 <p><blockquote>
7234 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
7235 </blockquote></p>
7236
7237 <p>The values present are</p>
7238
7239 <pre>
7240  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
7241  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
7242  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
7243  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
7244  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
7245  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
7246  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
7247  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
7248  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
7249  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
7250  ct   10             (chassis type)
7251  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
7252 </pre>
7253
7254 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
7255 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
7256
7257 <pre>
7258   3 Desktop
7259   4 Low Profile Desktop
7260   5 Pizza Box
7261   6 Mini Tower
7262   7 Tower
7263   8 Portable
7264   9 Laptop
7265  10 Notebook
7266  11 Hand Held
7267  12 Docking Station
7268  13 All In One
7269  14 Sub Notebook
7270  15 Space-saving
7271  16 Lunch Box
7272  17 Main Server Chassis
7273  18 Expansion Chassis
7274  19 Sub Chassis
7275  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
7276  21 Peripheral Chassis
7277  22 RAID Chassis
7278  23 Rack Mount Chassis
7279  24 Sealed-case PC
7280  25 Multi-system
7281  26 CompactPCI
7282  27 AdvancedTCA
7283  28 Blade
7284  29 Blade Enclosing
7285 </pre>
7286
7287 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
7288 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
7289 claim it is a desktop.</p>
7290
7291 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
7292
7293 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
7294 test machine:</p>
7295
7296 <p><blockquote>
7297 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
7298 </blockquote></p>
7299
7300 <p>The values present are</p>
7301
7302 <pre>
7303   ty  01  (type)
7304   pr  00  (prototype)
7305   id  00  (id)
7306   ex  00  (extra)
7307 </pre>
7308
7309 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
7310 the valid values are.</p>
7311
7312 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
7313
7314 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
7315 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
7316 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
7317 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
7318 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
7319 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
7320 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
7321
7322 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
7323
7324 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
7325 one can use the following shell script:</p>
7326
7327 <pre>
7328   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
7329     echo "$id" ; \
7330     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
7331   done
7332 </pre>
7333
7334 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
7335 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
7336
7337 <pre>
7338   acpi:ACPI0003:
7339     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
7340   acpi:device:
7341   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
7342   acpi:IBM0068:
7343     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
7344     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
7345     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
7346     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
7347   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7348     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
7349     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
7350     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
7351   [...]
7352 </pre>
7353
7354 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7355 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7356 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7357 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
7358
7359 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
7360 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
7361 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
7362
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="tags">
7365
7366
7367         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>.
7368
7369
7370       </div>
7371     </div>
7372     <div class="padding"></div>
7373
7374     <div class="entry">
7375       <div class="title">
7376         <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>
7377       </div>
7378       <div class="date">
7379         10th January 2013
7380       </div>
7381       <div class="body">
7382         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
7383 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
7384 Launcher and updated the Debian package
7385 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
7386 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
7387 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
7388 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
7389 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
7390 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
7391 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
7392 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
7393 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
7394 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
7395 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
7396 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
7397 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
7398 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
7399 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
7400
7401       </div>
7402       <div class="tags">
7403
7404
7405         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>.
7406
7407
7408       </div>
7409     </div>
7410     <div class="padding"></div>
7411
7412     <div class="entry">
7413       <div class="title">
7414         <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>
7415       </div>
7416       <div class="date">
7417          9th January 2013
7418       </div>
7419       <div class="body">
7420         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
7421 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
7422 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
7423 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
7424 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
7425 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
7426 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
7427 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
7428 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
7429 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
7430 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
7431
7432 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
7433 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
7434 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
7435 simple:
7436
7437 <ul>
7438
7439 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
7440   starting when a user log in.</li>
7441
7442 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
7443   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
7444
7445 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
7446   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
7447   packages.</li>
7448
7449 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
7450   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
7451
7452 </ul>
7453
7454 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
7455 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
7456 discover database to find packages and
7457 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
7458 packages.</p>
7459
7460 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
7461 draft package is now checked into
7462 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7463 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
7464 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
7465 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
7466 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
7467 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
7468 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
7469 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
7470 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
7471 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
7472 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
7473 because of the freeze).</p>
7474
7475 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
7476 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
7477 inserted):</p>
7478
7479 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
7480
7481 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
7482 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
7483 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
7484
7485 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
7486 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
7487 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
7488 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
7489 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
7490 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
7491 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
7492
7493 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
7494 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
7495 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
7496 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
7497 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
7498 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
7499 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
7500 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
7501 not be installed?</p>
7502
7503 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
7504 please send me an email. :)</p>
7505
7506       </div>
7507       <div class="tags">
7508
7509
7510         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>.
7511
7512
7513       </div>
7514     </div>
7515     <div class="padding"></div>
7516
7517     <div class="entry">
7518       <div class="title">
7519         <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>
7520       </div>
7521       <div class="date">
7522          2nd January 2013
7523       </div>
7524       <div class="body">
7525         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7526 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
7527 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7528 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7529 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
7530 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7531 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
7532 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7533 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
7534 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
7535
7536 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
7537 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
7538 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
7539
7540       </div>
7541       <div class="tags">
7542
7543
7544         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>.
7545
7546
7547       </div>
7548     </div>
7549     <div class="padding"></div>
7550
7551     <div class="entry">
7552       <div class="title">
7553         <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>
7554       </div>
7555       <div class="date">
7556         25th December 2012
7557       </div>
7558       <div class="body">
7559         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7560 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
7561
7562 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
7563 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7564 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7565 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7566 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
7567 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
7568 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7569 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
7570 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7571 name.</p>
7572
7573 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7574 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7575 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
7576
7577 <blockquote><pre>
7578 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7579 cd bitcoin
7580 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7581 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7582 </pre></blockquote>
7583
7584 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
7585 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7586 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
7587 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
7588 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
7589 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7590 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7591 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7592 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
7593
7594 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7595 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7596 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7597
7598       </div>
7599       <div class="tags">
7600
7601
7602         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>.
7603
7604
7605       </div>
7606     </div>
7607     <div class="padding"></div>
7608
7609     <div class="entry">
7610       <div class="title">
7611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
7612       </div>
7613       <div class="date">
7614         21st December 2012
7615       </div>
7616       <div class="body">
7617         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
7618 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
7619 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7620 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
7621 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
7622 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
7623 is now maintained by a
7624 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
7625 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
7626 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7627 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7628 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7629 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7630 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
7631 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7632 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7633 Corallo in a
7634 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7635 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7636 Debian package.</p>
7637
7638 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7639 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7640 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7641 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7642 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7643 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7644 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7645 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
7646 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7647 new version to unstable.
7648
7649 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7650 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
7651 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7652 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7653 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7654 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7655 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7656 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
7657 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7658 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7659 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
7660 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7661 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7662 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
7663 have not tested them.</p>
7664
7665 <p>My
7666 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7667 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7668 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7669 years ago, as can be
7670 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7671 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
7672 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7673 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7674 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
7675 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7676 the same address as last time,
7677 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7678
7679       </div>
7680       <div class="tags">
7681
7682
7683         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>.
7684
7685
7686       </div>
7687     </div>
7688     <div class="padding"></div>
7689
7690     <div class="entry">
7691       <div class="title">
7692         <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>
7693       </div>
7694       <div class="date">
7695          7th September 2012
7696       </div>
7697       <div class="body">
7698         <p>As I
7699 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7700 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7701 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7702 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7703 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7704
7705 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7706 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7707 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7708 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7709
7710 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7711 PostScript formats at
7712 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7713 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7714
7715       </div>
7716       <div class="tags">
7717
7718
7719         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>.
7720
7721
7722       </div>
7723     </div>
7724     <div class="padding"></div>
7725
7726     <div class="entry">
7727       <div class="title">
7728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
7729       </div>
7730       <div class="date">
7731         16th August 2012
7732       </div>
7733       <div class="body">
7734         <p>I dag fyller
7735 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
7736 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
7737 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
7738
7739       </div>
7740       <div class="tags">
7741
7742
7743         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>.
7744
7745
7746       </div>
7747     </div>
7748     <div class="padding"></div>
7749
7750     <div class="entry">
7751       <div class="title">
7752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7753       </div>
7754       <div class="date">
7755         24th June 2012
7756       </div>
7757       <div class="body">
7758         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7759 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7760 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
7761 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7762 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7763 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
7764 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7765 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7766 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
7767 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
7768 missing in my book.</p>
7769
7770 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7771 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7772 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7773 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
7774 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
7775 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
7776 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7777
7778       </div>
7779       <div class="tags">
7780
7781
7782         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>.
7783
7784
7785       </div>
7786     </div>
7787     <div class="padding"></div>
7788
7789     <div class="entry">
7790       <div class="title">
7791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
7792       </div>
7793       <div class="date">
7794         21st November 2011
7795       </div>
7796       <div class="body">
7797         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
7798 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
7799 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
7800 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
7801 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
7802 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
7803 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
7804 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
7805 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
7806 the tools to do so.</p>
7807
7808 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
7809 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
7810 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
7811 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
7812
7813 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
7814 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
7815 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
7816 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
7817 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
7818 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
7819 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
7820 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
7821
7822 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
7823 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
7824 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
7825
7826 <p><pre>
7827 #!/usr/bin/perl
7828 use strict;
7829 use warnings;
7830 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
7831 BEGIN {
7832     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
7833     my %rhelmodules = (
7834         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
7835         );
7836     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
7837         eval "use $module;";
7838         if ($@) {
7839             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
7840             system("yum install -y $pkg");
7841             eval "use $module;";
7842         }
7843     }
7844 }
7845 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
7846
7847 upgrade_dell();
7848
7849 exit 0;
7850
7851 sub run_firmware_script {
7852     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
7853     unless ($script) {
7854         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
7855         exit 1
7856     }
7857     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
7858
7859     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
7860         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
7861     } else {
7862         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
7863     }
7864 }
7865
7866 sub run_firmware_scripts {
7867     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
7868     # Run firmware packages
7869     for my $dir (@dirs) {
7870         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
7871         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
7872         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
7873             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
7874             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
7875         }
7876         closedir $dh;
7877     }
7878 }
7879
7880 sub download {
7881     my $url = shift;
7882     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
7883     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
7884 }
7885
7886 sub upgrade_dell {
7887     my @dirs;
7888     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7889     chomp $product;
7890
7891     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
7892
7893         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
7894         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
7895
7896         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
7897             CLEANUP => 1
7898             );
7899         chdir($tmpdir);
7900         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
7901         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
7902         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
7903         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
7904         my $fwopts = "-q";
7905         if (@paths) {
7906             for my $url (@paths) {
7907                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
7908             }
7909             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
7910         } else {
7911             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7912             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7913         }
7914         chdir('/');
7915     } else {
7916         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7917         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7918     }
7919 }
7920
7921 sub fetch_dell_fw {
7922     my $path = shift;
7923     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
7924     download($url);
7925 }
7926
7927 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
7928 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
7929 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
7930 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
7931     my $filename = shift;
7932
7933     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7934     chomp $product;
7935     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
7936
7937     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
7938
7939     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
7940     my @paths;
7941     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
7942         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
7943         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
7944         my $oscode;
7945         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
7946             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
7947         } else {
7948             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
7949         }
7950         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
7951         {
7952             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
7953         }
7954     }
7955     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
7956         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
7957
7958         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
7959         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
7960
7961         my $cpath = $component->{path};
7962         for my $path (@paths) {
7963             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
7964                 push(@paths, $cpath);
7965             }
7966         }
7967     }
7968     return @paths;
7969 }
7970 </pre>
7971
7972 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
7973 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
7974 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
7975 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
7976 outdated.</p>
7977
7978       </div>
7979       <div class="tags">
7980
7981
7982         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>.
7983
7984
7985       </div>
7986     </div>
7987     <div class="padding"></div>
7988
7989     <div class="entry">
7990       <div class="title">
7991         <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>
7992       </div>
7993       <div class="date">
7994          4th August 2011
7995       </div>
7996       <div class="body">
7997         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
7998 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
7999 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
8000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
8001 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
8002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
8003 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
8004 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
8005 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
8006
8007 <p><blockquote>
8008 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
8009 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
8010 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
8011 </blockquote></p>
8012
8013 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
8014 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
8015 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
8016 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
8017 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
8018 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
8019 hard to explain.</p>
8020
8021 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
8022 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
8023 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
8024 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
8025 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
8026 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
8027 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
8028 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
8029 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
8030 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
8031 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
8032 mode).</p>
8033
8034 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
8035 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
8036 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
8037 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
8038 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
8039 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
8040 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
8041 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
8042 after visiting single user mode.</p>
8043
8044 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
8045 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
8046 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
8047 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
8048 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
8049 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
8050 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
8051 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
8052
8053 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
8054 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
8055 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
8056
8057       </div>
8058       <div class="tags">
8059
8060
8061         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>.
8062
8063
8064       </div>
8065     </div>
8066     <div class="padding"></div>
8067
8068     <div class="entry">
8069       <div class="title">
8070         <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>
8071       </div>
8072       <div class="date">
8073         30th July 2011
8074       </div>
8075       <div class="body">
8076         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
8077 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
8078 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
8079 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
8080 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
8081 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
8082 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
8083 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
8084 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
8085 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
8086 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
8087 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
8088 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
8089
8090 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
8091 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
8092 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
8093 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
8094 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
8095 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
8096 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
8097 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
8098 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
8099
8100 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
8101 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
8102 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
8103 is presented.</p>
8104
8105 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
8106 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
8107 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
8108 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
8109 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
8110 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
8111 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
8112 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
8113 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
8114 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
8115 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
8116 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
8117 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
8118 find time to push this forward.</p>
8119
8120       </div>
8121       <div class="tags">
8122
8123
8124         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>.
8125
8126
8127       </div>
8128     </div>
8129     <div class="padding"></div>
8130
8131     <div class="entry">
8132       <div class="title">
8133         <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>
8134       </div>
8135       <div class="date">
8136         29th July 2011
8137       </div>
8138       <div class="body">
8139         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
8140 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
8141 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
8142 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
8143 issues.</p>
8144
8145 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
8146 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
8147 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
8148
8149 <ol>
8150
8151 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
8152 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
8153 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
8154 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
8155 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
8156 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
8157 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
8158 Debian.</li>
8159
8160 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
8161 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
8162 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
8163 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
8164 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
8165 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
8166 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
8167 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
8168 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
8169 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
8170 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
8171 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
8172 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
8173
8174 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
8175 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
8176 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
8177 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
8178 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
8179 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
8180 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
8181 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
8182 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
8183 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
8184
8185 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
8186 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
8187 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
8188 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
8189 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
8190 latter behaviour.</li>
8191
8192 </ol>
8193
8194 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
8195 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
8196 it do not matter much.</p>
8197
8198 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
8199 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
8200 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
8201
8202       </div>
8203       <div class="tags">
8204
8205
8206         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>.
8207
8208
8209       </div>
8210     </div>
8211     <div class="padding"></div>
8212
8213     <div class="entry">
8214       <div class="title">
8215         <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>
8216       </div>
8217       <div class="date">
8218         26th July 2011
8219       </div>
8220       <div class="body">
8221         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
8222 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
8223 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
8224 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
8225 security support for a few years.</p>
8226
8227 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
8228 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
8229 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
8230 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
8231 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
8232 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
8233 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
8234 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
8235 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
8236 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
8237 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
8238 easier in the future.</p>
8239
8240 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
8241 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
8242 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
8243 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
8244 do not have time for.</p>
8245
8246       </div>
8247       <div class="tags">
8248
8249
8250         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>.
8251
8252
8253       </div>
8254     </div>
8255     <div class="padding"></div>
8256
8257     <div class="entry">
8258       <div class="title">
8259         <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>
8260       </div>
8261       <div class="date">
8262          3rd April 2011
8263       </div>
8264       <div class="body">
8265         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
8266 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
8267 update in English.</p>
8268
8269 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
8270 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
8271 of the British service
8272 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
8273 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
8274 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
8275 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
8276 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
8277 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
8278 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
8279 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
8280 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
8281 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
8282 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
8283 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
8284 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
8285
8286 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
8287 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
8288 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
8289 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
8290 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
8291 public infrastructure.</p>
8292
8293 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
8294 such service?</p>
8295
8296       </div>
8297       <div class="tags">
8298
8299
8300         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>.
8301
8302
8303       </div>
8304     </div>
8305     <div class="padding"></div>
8306
8307     <div class="entry">
8308       <div class="title">
8309         <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>
8310       </div>
8311       <div class="date">
8312         28th January 2011
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="body">
8315         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
8316 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
8317 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
8318 available on the Internet, and check our locally
8319 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
8320 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
8321 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
8322 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
8323 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
8324 out which security holes were present in our free software
8325 collection.</p>
8326
8327 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
8328 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
8329 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
8330 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
8331 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
8332 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
8333 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
8334 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
8335 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
8336 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
8337 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
8338 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
8339 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
8340 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
8341 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
8342 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
8343
8344 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
8345 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
8346 check out, one could look up
8347 <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
8348 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
8349 The most recent one is
8350 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
8351 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
8352 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
8353
8354 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
8355 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
8356 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
8357 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
8358 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
8359 security issues out.</p>
8360
8361 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
8362 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
8363 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
8364 RHEL is providing
8365 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
8366 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
8367 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
8368
8369 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
8370 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
8371 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
8372 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
8373 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
8374 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
8375 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
8376 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
8377 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
8378 established soon.</p>
8379
8380 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
8381 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
8382 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
8383 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
8384 for their packages.</p>
8385
8386       </div>
8387       <div class="tags">
8388
8389
8390         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>.
8391
8392
8393       </div>
8394     </div>
8395     <div class="padding"></div>
8396
8397     <div class="entry">
8398       <div class="title">
8399         <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>
8400       </div>
8401       <div class="date">
8402         23rd January 2011
8403       </div>
8404       <div class="body">
8405         <p>In the
8406 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
8407 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
8408 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
8409 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
8410 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
8411 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
8412 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
8413 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
8414 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
8415 one of my machines like this:</p>
8416
8417 <pre>
8418 loaded modules:
8419 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
8420 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
8421 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
8422 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
8423 10de:03ec pata_amd
8424 10de:03f6 sata_nv
8425 1022:1103 k8temp
8426 109e:036e bttv
8427 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
8428 11ab:4364 sky2
8429 </pre>
8430
8431 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
8432 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
8433
8434 <pre>
8435 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
8436     echo loaded pci modules:
8437     (
8438         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
8439         for address in * ; do
8440             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8441                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8442                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8443                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8444                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
8445                     echo "$id $module"
8446                 fi
8447             fi
8448         done
8449     )
8450     echo
8451 fi
8452 </pre>
8453
8454 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
8455 mappings:</p>
8456
8457 <pre>
8458 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
8459     echo loaded usb modules:
8460     (
8461         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
8462         for address in * ; do
8463             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8464                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8465                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8466                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8467                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
8468                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
8469                         echo "$id $module"
8470                     fi
8471                 fi
8472             fi
8473         done
8474     )
8475     echo
8476 fi
8477 </pre>
8478
8479 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
8480 well.</p>
8481
8482       </div>
8483       <div class="tags">
8484
8485
8486         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>.
8487
8488
8489       </div>
8490     </div>
8491     <div class="padding"></div>
8492
8493     <div class="entry">
8494       <div class="title">
8495         <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>
8496       </div>
8497       <div class="date">
8498         22nd December 2010
8499       </div>
8500       <div class="body">
8501         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
8502 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
8503 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
8504 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
8505 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
8506 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
8507 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
8508 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
8509 university.</p>
8510
8511 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
8512 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
8513 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8514 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
8515 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8516 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8517 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8518 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
8519
8520 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
8521 I perform on a new model.</p>
8522
8523 <ul>
8524
8525 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8526 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
8527 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
8528
8529 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
8530 installation, X.org is working.</li>
8531
8532 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
8533 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8534 reported by the program.</li>
8535
8536 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8537 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
8538 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8539 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
8540 normally test this by playing
8541 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8542 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
8543
8544 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
8545 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8546
8547 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8548 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8549
8550 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
8551 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
8552
8553 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8554 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
8555 few.</li>
8556
8557 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
8558 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8559 notice this.</li>
8560
8561 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
8562 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8563 resume.</li>
8564
8565 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8566 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8567 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
8568 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8569 not.</li>
8570
8571 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8572 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8573 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8574 existence.</li>
8575
8576 </ul>
8577
8578 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8579 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
8580 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
8581 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8582 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
8583 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
8584 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8585 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
8586
8587       </div>
8588       <div class="tags">
8589
8590
8591         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>.
8592
8593
8594       </div>
8595     </div>
8596     <div class="padding"></div>
8597
8598     <div class="entry">
8599       <div class="title">
8600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="date">
8603         11th December 2010
8604       </div>
8605       <div class="body">
8606         <p>As I continue to explore
8607 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
8608 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8609 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
8610
8611 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8612 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8613 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8614 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8615 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8616 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
8617 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
8618 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
8619 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
8620 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
8621 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
8622 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
8623 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
8624 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8625 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8626 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8627 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
8628 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8629 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8630 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
8631
8632 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8633 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8634 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8635 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8636 If the Skolelinux foundation
8637 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8638 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8639 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8640 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8641 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
8642 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
8643 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8644 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
8645
8646 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8647 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
8648 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8649 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8650 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
8651 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8652 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
8653 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8654 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8655 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8656 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
8657 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8658 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8659 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8660 currencies.</p>
8661
8662 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8663 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8664 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8665 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
8666 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8667 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8668 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8669 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
8670 BitCoins.  Check out
8671 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
8672 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
8673 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8674 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8675 yet.</p>
8676
8677 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
8678 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8679 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8680 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
8681 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
8682
8683       </div>
8684       <div class="tags">
8685
8686
8687         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>.
8688
8689
8690       </div>
8691     </div>
8692     <div class="padding"></div>
8693
8694     <div class="entry">
8695       <div class="title">
8696         <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>
8697       </div>
8698       <div class="date">
8699         10th December 2010
8700       </div>
8701       <div class="body">
8702         <p>With this weeks lawless
8703 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
8704 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
8705 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
8706 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
8707 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
8708 A blog post from
8709 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
8710 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
8711 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
8712 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
8713 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
8714 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
8715 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
8716
8717 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
8718 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
8719 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
8720 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
8721 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
8722 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
8723 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
8724 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
8725 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
8726 Debian</a> soon.</p>
8727
8728 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
8729 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
8730 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
8731 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
8732 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
8733 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
8734 you can even get
8735 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
8736 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
8737 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
8738 on the current exchange rates.</p>
8739
8740 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
8741 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
8742 donations to the address
8743 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
8744
8745       </div>
8746       <div class="tags">
8747
8748
8749         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>.
8750
8751
8752       </div>
8753     </div>
8754     <div class="padding"></div>
8755
8756     <div class="entry">
8757       <div class="title">
8758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
8759       </div>
8760       <div class="date">
8761         27th November 2010
8762       </div>
8763       <div class="body">
8764         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8765 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8766 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8767 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8768 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
8769 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8770 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8771 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
8772
8773 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8774 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8775 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
8776 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8777 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8778 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
8779 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
8780 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8781 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
8782 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8783 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
8784
8785 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8786 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8787 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
8788 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8789 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
8790 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8791 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8792 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8793 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8794 what is going on.</p>
8795
8796       </div>
8797       <div class="tags">
8798
8799
8800         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>.
8801
8802
8803       </div>
8804     </div>
8805     <div class="padding"></div>
8806
8807     <div class="entry">
8808       <div class="title">
8809         <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>
8810       </div>
8811       <div class="date">
8812         22nd November 2010
8813       </div>
8814       <div class="body">
8815         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8816 upgrade testing of the
8817 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8818 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
8819 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8820 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
8821
8822 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8823
8824 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8825
8826 <blockquote><p>
8827   apache2.2-bin
8828   aptdaemon
8829   baobab
8830   binfmt-support
8831   browser-plugin-gnash
8832   cheese-common
8833   cli-common
8834   cups-pk-helper
8835   dmz-cursor-theme
8836   empathy
8837   empathy-common
8838   freedesktop-sound-theme
8839   freeglut3
8840   gconf-defaults-service
8841   gdm-themes
8842   gedit-plugins
8843   geoclue
8844   geoclue-hostip
8845   geoclue-localnet
8846   geoclue-manual
8847   geoclue-yahoo
8848   gnash
8849   gnash-common
8850   gnome
8851   gnome-backgrounds
8852   gnome-cards-data
8853   gnome-codec-install
8854   gnome-core
8855   gnome-desktop-environment
8856   gnome-disk-utility
8857   gnome-screenshot
8858   gnome-search-tool
8859   gnome-session-canberra
8860   gnome-system-log
8861   gnome-themes-extras
8862   gnome-themes-more
8863   gnome-user-share
8864   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8865   gstreamer0.10-tools
8866   gtk2-engines
8867   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8868   gtk2-engines-smooth
8869   hamster-applet
8870   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8871   libapr1
8872   libaprutil1
8873   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8874   libaprutil1-ldap
8875   libart2.0-cil
8876   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8877   libboost-python1.42.0
8878   libboost-thread1.42.0
8879   libchamplain-0.4-0
8880   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8881   libcheese-gtk18
8882   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8883   libcryptui0
8884   libdiscid0
8885   libelf1
8886   libepc-1.0-2
8887   libepc-common
8888   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8889   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8890   libfreerdp0
8891   libgconf2.0-cil
8892   libgdata-common
8893   libgdata7
8894   libgdu-gtk0
8895   libgee2
8896   libgeoclue0
8897   libgexiv2-0
8898   libgif4
8899   libglade2.0-cil
8900   libglib2.0-cil
8901   libgmime2.4-cil
8902   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8903   libgnome2.24-cil
8904   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8905   libgpod-common
8906   libgpod4
8907   libgtk2.0-cil
8908   libgtkglext1
8909   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8910   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8911   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8912   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8913   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8914   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8915   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8916   libmono-security2.0-cil
8917   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8918   libmono-system2.0-cil
8919   libmtp8
8920   libmusicbrainz3-6
8921   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8922   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8923   libopal3.6.8
8924   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8925   libpt2.6.7
8926   libpython2.6
8927   librpm1
8928   librpmio1
8929   libsdl1.2debian
8930   libsrtp0
8931   libssh-4
8932   libtelepathy-farsight0
8933   libtelepathy-glib0
8934   libtidy-0.99-0
8935   media-player-info
8936   mesa-utils
8937   mono-2.0-gac
8938   mono-gac
8939   mono-runtime
8940   nautilus-sendto
8941   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8942   p7zip-full
8943   pkg-config
8944   python-aptdaemon
8945   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8946   python-axiom
8947   python-beautifulsoup
8948   python-bugbuddy
8949   python-clientform
8950   python-coherence
8951   python-configobj
8952   python-crypto
8953   python-cupshelpers
8954   python-elementtree
8955   python-epsilon
8956   python-evolution
8957   python-feedparser
8958   python-gdata
8959   python-gdbm
8960   python-gst0.10
8961   python-gtkglext1
8962   python-gtksourceview2
8963   python-httplib2
8964   python-louie
8965   python-mako
8966   python-markupsafe
8967   python-mechanize
8968   python-nevow
8969   python-notify
8970   python-opengl
8971   python-openssl
8972   python-pam
8973   python-pkg-resources
8974   python-pyasn1
8975   python-pysqlite2
8976   python-rdflib
8977   python-serial
8978   python-tagpy
8979   python-twisted-bin
8980   python-twisted-conch
8981   python-twisted-core
8982   python-twisted-web
8983   python-utidylib
8984   python-webkit
8985   python-xdg
8986   python-zope.interface
8987   remmina
8988   remmina-plugin-data
8989   remmina-plugin-rdp
8990   remmina-plugin-vnc
8991   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8992   rhythmbox-plugins
8993   rpm-common
8994   rpm2cpio
8995   seahorse-plugins
8996   shotwell
8997   software-center
8998   system-config-printer-udev
8999   telepathy-gabble
9000   telepathy-mission-control-5
9001   telepathy-salut
9002   tomboy
9003   totem
9004   totem-coherence
9005   totem-mozilla
9006   totem-plugins
9007   transmission-common
9008   xdg-user-dirs
9009   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
9010   xserver-xephyr
9011 </p></blockquote>
9012
9013 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9014
9015 <blockquote><p>
9016   cheese
9017   ekiga
9018   eog
9019   epiphany-extensions
9020   evolution-exchange
9021   fast-user-switch-applet
9022   file-roller
9023   gcalctool
9024   gconf-editor
9025   gdm
9026   gedit
9027   gedit-common
9028   gnome-games
9029   gnome-games-data
9030   gnome-nettool
9031   gnome-system-tools
9032   gnome-themes
9033   gnuchess
9034   gucharmap
9035   guile-1.8-libs
9036   libavahi-ui0
9037   libdmx1
9038   libgalago3
9039   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9040   libgtksourceview2.0-0
9041   liblircclient0
9042   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
9043   libspeexdsp1
9044   libsvga1
9045   rhythmbox
9046   seahorse
9047   sound-juicer
9048   system-config-printer
9049   totem-common
9050   transmission-gtk
9051   vinagre
9052   vino
9053 </p></blockquote>
9054
9055 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9056
9057 <blockquote><p>
9058   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9059 </p></blockquote>
9060
9061 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9062
9063 <blockquote><p>
9064 [nothing]
9065 </p></blockquote>
9066
9067 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9068
9069 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9070
9071 <blockquote><p>
9072   ksmserver
9073 </p></blockquote>
9074
9075 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9076
9077 <blockquote><p>
9078   kwin
9079   network-manager-kde
9080 </p></blockquote>
9081
9082 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9083
9084 <blockquote><p>
9085   arts
9086   dolphin
9087   freespacenotifier
9088   google-gadgets-gst
9089   google-gadgets-xul
9090   kappfinder
9091   kcalc
9092   kcharselect
9093   kde-core
9094   kde-plasma-desktop
9095   kde-standard
9096   kde-window-manager
9097   kdeartwork
9098   kdeartwork-emoticons
9099   kdeartwork-style
9100   kdeartwork-theme-icon
9101   kdebase
9102   kdebase-apps
9103   kdebase-workspace
9104   kdebase-workspace-bin
9105   kdebase-workspace-data
9106   kdeeject
9107   kdelibs
9108   kdeplasma-addons
9109   kdeutils
9110   kdewallpapers
9111   kdf
9112   kfloppy
9113   kgpg
9114   khelpcenter4
9115   kinfocenter
9116   konq-plugins-l10n
9117   konqueror-nsplugins
9118   kscreensaver
9119   kscreensaver-xsavers
9120   ktimer
9121   kwrite
9122   libgle3
9123   libkde4-ruby1.8
9124   libkonq5
9125   libkonq5-templates
9126   libnetpbm10
9127   libplasma-ruby
9128   libplasma-ruby1.8
9129   libqt4-ruby1.8
9130   marble-data
9131   marble-plugins
9132   netpbm
9133   nuvola-icon-theme
9134   plasma-dataengines-workspace
9135   plasma-desktop
9136   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
9137   plasma-runners-addons
9138   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
9139   plasma-scriptengine-python
9140   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
9141   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
9142   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
9143   plasma-scriptengines
9144   plasma-wallpapers-addons
9145   plasma-widget-folderview
9146   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9147   ruby
9148   sweeper
9149   update-notifier-kde
9150   xscreensaver-data-extra
9151   xscreensaver-gl
9152   xscreensaver-gl-extra
9153   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9154 </p></blockquote>
9155
9156 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9157
9158 <blockquote><p>
9159   ark
9160   google-gadgets-common
9161   google-gadgets-qt
9162   htdig
9163   kate
9164   kdebase-bin
9165   kdebase-data
9166   kdepasswd
9167   kfind
9168   klipper
9169   konq-plugins
9170   konqueror
9171   ksysguard
9172   ksysguardd
9173   libarchive1
9174   libcln6
9175   libeet1
9176   libeina-svn-06
9177   libggadget-1.0-0b
9178   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
9179   libgps19
9180   libkdecorations4
9181   libkephal4
9182   libkonq4
9183   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
9184   libkscreensaver5
9185   libksgrd4
9186   libksignalplotter4
9187   libkunitconversion4
9188   libkwineffects1a
9189   libmarblewidget4
9190   libntrack-qt4-1
9191   libntrack0
9192   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
9193   libplasmaclock4a
9194   libplasmagenericshell4
9195   libprocesscore4a
9196   libprocessui4a
9197   libqalculate5
9198   libqedje0a
9199   libqtruby4shared2
9200   libqzion0a
9201   libruby1.8
9202   libscim8c2a
9203   libsmokekdecore4-3
9204   libsmokekdeui4-3
9205   libsmokekfile3
9206   libsmokekhtml3
9207   libsmokekio3
9208   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
9209   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
9210   libsmokekparts3
9211   libsmokektexteditor3
9212   libsmokekutils3
9213   libsmokenepomuk3
9214   libsmokephonon3
9215   libsmokeplasma3
9216   libsmokeqtcore4-3
9217   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
9218   libsmokeqtgui4-3
9219   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
9220   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
9221   libsmokeqtscript4-3
9222   libsmokeqtsql4-3
9223   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
9224   libsmokeqttest4-3
9225   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
9226   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
9227   libsmokeqtxml4-3
9228   libsmokesolid3
9229   libsmokesoprano3
9230   libtaskmanager4a
9231   libtidy-0.99-0
9232   libweather-ion4a
9233   libxklavier16
9234   libxxf86misc1
9235   okteta
9236   oxygencursors
9237   plasma-dataengines-addons
9238   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
9239   plasma-widget-lancelot
9240   plasma-widgets-addons
9241   plasma-widgets-workspace
9242   polkit-kde-1
9243   ruby1.8
9244   systemsettings
9245   update-notifier-common
9246 </p></blockquote>
9247
9248 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
9249 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
9250 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
9251 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
9252
9253       </div>
9254       <div class="tags">
9255
9256
9257         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>.
9258
9259
9260       </div>
9261     </div>
9262     <div class="padding"></div>
9263
9264     <div class="entry">
9265       <div class="title">
9266         <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>
9267       </div>
9268       <div class="date">
9269         22nd November 2010
9270       </div>
9271       <div class="body">
9272         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
9273 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
9274 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
9275 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
9276 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
9277 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
9278 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
9279 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
9280 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
9281
9282 <p>I found
9283 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
9284 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
9285 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
9286 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
9287 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
9288 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
9289
9290 <pre>
9291 #!/bin/sh
9292
9293 # Based on
9294 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
9295
9296 set -e
9297 set -x
9298
9299 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
9300     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
9301     exit 1
9302 else
9303     host="$1"
9304 fi
9305
9306 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
9307     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
9308     exit 1
9309 fi
9310
9311 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
9312 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9313 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9314 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
9315
9316 img=$host.img
9317 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
9318 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
9319
9320 parted $img mklabel msdos
9321 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
9322 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
9323 parted $img set 1 boot on
9324
9325 modprobe dm-mod
9326 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
9327 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
9328
9329 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
9330 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
9331 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
9332
9333 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
9334 losetup -d /dev/loop0
9335 </pre>
9336
9337 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
9338 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
9339
9340 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
9341 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
9342 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
9343 seem to work just fine.</p>
9344
9345       </div>
9346       <div class="tags">
9347
9348
9349         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>.
9350
9351
9352       </div>
9353     </div>
9354     <div class="padding"></div>
9355
9356     <div class="entry">
9357       <div class="title">
9358         <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>
9359       </div>
9360       <div class="date">
9361         20th November 2010
9362       </div>
9363       <div class="body">
9364         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
9365 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9366 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
9367 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
9368
9369 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
9370 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
9371 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
9372
9373 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9374
9375 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9376
9377 <blockquote><p>
9378   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
9379   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
9380   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
9381   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
9382   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
9383   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
9384   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
9385   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
9386   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
9387   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
9388   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9389   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9390   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
9391   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
9392   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
9393   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
9394   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
9395   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
9396   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9397   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
9398   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
9399   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9400   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
9401   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
9402   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
9403   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9404   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9405   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
9406   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9407   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
9408   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
9409   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9410   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
9411   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
9412   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
9413   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
9414   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
9415   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
9416   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
9417   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
9418   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
9419   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
9420   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
9421   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
9422   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
9423   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
9424   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
9425   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
9426   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
9427   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
9428   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
9429   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
9430   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9431   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
9432   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
9433   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
9434   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
9435   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
9436   zip
9437 </p></blockquote>
9438
9439 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
9440
9441 <blockquote><p>
9442   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
9443   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
9444   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
9445   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
9446   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
9447   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
9448   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
9449   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
9450   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
9451   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
9452   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
9453   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9454   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9455   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9456   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9457   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
9458   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9459   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
9460   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
9461   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
9462   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
9463   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
9464   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9465   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
9466   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
9467   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
9468   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
9469   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
9470   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
9471 </p></blockquote>
9472
9473 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9474
9475 <blockquote><p>
9476   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9477 </p></blockquote>
9478
9479 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9480
9481 <blockquote><p>
9482 [nothing]
9483 </p></blockquote>
9484
9485 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9486
9487 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9488
9489 <blockquote><p>
9490   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
9491   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9492   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
9493   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
9494   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
9495   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
9496   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9497   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
9498   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
9499   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9500   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
9501   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
9502   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
9503   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
9504   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
9505   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
9506   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
9507   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
9508   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
9509   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
9510   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
9511   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
9512   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9513   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9514   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9515   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9516   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9517   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9518   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9519   ttf-sazanami-gothic
9520 </p></blockquote>
9521
9522 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9523
9524 <blockquote><p>
9525   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9526   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9527   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9528   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9529   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9530   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9531   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9532   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9533   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9534   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9535   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9536   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9537   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9538   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9539   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9540   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9541   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
9542   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9543   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9544   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
9545   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9546   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9547   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9548   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9549   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9550   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9551   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9552   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
9553   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
9554   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9555   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9556   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9557   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9558 </p></blockquote>
9559
9560 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9561
9562 <blockquote><p>
9563   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9564   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9565   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9566   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9567   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9568   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9569   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9570 </p></blockquote>
9571
9572 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9573
9574 <blockquote><p>
9575   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9576 </p></blockquote>
9577
9578       </div>
9579       <div class="tags">
9580
9581
9582         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>.
9583
9584
9585       </div>
9586     </div>
9587     <div class="padding"></div>
9588
9589     <div class="entry">
9590       <div class="title">
9591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
9592       </div>
9593       <div class="date">
9594         20th November 2010
9595       </div>
9596       <div class="body">
9597         <p>Answering
9598 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9599 call from the Gnash project</a> for
9600 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
9601 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9602 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9603 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9604 releases out more often.</p>
9605
9606 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9607 I have considered setting up a <a
9608 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
9609 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9610 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
9611 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
9612 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9613 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9614 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9615 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
9616 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9617 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9618 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
9619 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
9620
9621       </div>
9622       <div class="tags">
9623
9624
9625         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>.
9626
9627
9628       </div>
9629     </div>
9630     <div class="padding"></div>
9631
9632     <div class="entry">
9633       <div class="title">
9634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
9635       </div>
9636       <div class="date">
9637          9th November 2010
9638       </div>
9639       <div class="body">
9640         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9641
9642 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
9643 3D linked in from
9644 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9645 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
9646
9647       </div>
9648       <div class="tags">
9649
9650
9651         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>.
9652
9653
9654       </div>
9655     </div>
9656     <div class="padding"></div>
9657
9658     <div class="entry">
9659       <div class="title">
9660         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
9661       </div>
9662       <div class="date">
9663         24th October 2010
9664       </div>
9665       <div class="body">
9666         <p>Some updates.</p>
9667
9668 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
9669 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
9670 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
9671 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9672 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
9673 :)</p>
9674
9675 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9676 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9677 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9678 It is called
9679 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
9680 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
9681 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9682 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9683 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9684 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
9685
9686 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
9687 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
9688 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
9689 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
9690 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
9691 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
9692 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
9693 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
9694 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
9695 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
9696
9697       </div>
9698       <div class="tags">
9699
9700
9701         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>.
9702
9703
9704       </div>
9705     </div>
9706     <div class="padding"></div>
9707
9708     <div class="entry">
9709       <div class="title">
9710         <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>
9711       </div>
9712       <div class="date">
9713          4th September 2010
9714       </div>
9715       <div class="body">
9716         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
9717 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9718 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9719 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9720 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9721 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9722 installed.</p>
9723
9724 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9725 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
9726 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9727 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9728 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9729 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9730 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9731 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9732 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9733
9734 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9735 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9736 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9737 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9738 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9739 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9740 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9741 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9742 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9743 pages they want to visit.</p>
9744
9745 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9746 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9747 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9748 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9749 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9750 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9751 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9752 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9753 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9754 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9755 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9756
9757       </div>
9758       <div class="tags">
9759
9760
9761         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>.
9762
9763
9764       </div>
9765     </div>
9766     <div class="padding"></div>
9767
9768     <div class="entry">
9769       <div class="title">
9770         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
9771       </div>
9772       <div class="date">
9773         27th July 2010
9774       </div>
9775       <div class="body">
9776         <p>I discovered this while doing
9777 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9778 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
9779 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9780 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9781 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
9782
9783 <p>An example is from todays
9784 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9785 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9786 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9787 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9788 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9789 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9790 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
9791
9792 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
9793
9794 <blockquote><pre>
9795 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9796  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
9797   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9798 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9799  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9800 </pre></blockquote>
9801
9802 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9803 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
9804 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9805 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9806 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9807 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9808 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9809 of dependency loops.</p>
9810
9811 <p>Thanks to
9812 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
9813 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
9814 dependencies
9815 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
9816 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
9817
9818 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9819 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
9820 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
9821 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9822 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9823 it.</p>
9824
9825       </div>
9826       <div class="tags">
9827
9828
9829         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>.
9830
9831
9832       </div>
9833     </div>
9834     <div class="padding"></div>
9835
9836     <div class="entry">
9837       <div class="title">
9838         <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>
9839       </div>
9840       <div class="date">
9841         17th July 2010
9842       </div>
9843       <div class="body">
9844         <p>This is a
9845 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
9846 on my
9847 <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
9848 work</a> on
9849 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
9850 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
9851
9852 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
9853 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
9854 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
9855 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
9856
9857 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
9858 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
9859 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
9860
9861 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
9862
9863 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
9864 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
9865 the web.
9866
9867 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
9868 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
9869 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
9870 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
9871 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
9872 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
9873
9874 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
9875 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
9876 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
9877 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
9878 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
9879 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
9880 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
9881 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
9882 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
9883 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
9884 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
9885 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
9886 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
9887 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
9888 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
9889 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
9890
9891 <blockquote><pre>
9892 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9893   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9894   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9895   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9896   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9897   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9898   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9899
9900 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9901   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9902   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
9903   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
9904   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
9905   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
9906 </pre></blockquote>
9907
9908 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
9909 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
9910 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
9911 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9912 also exist.</p>
9913
9914 <blockquote><pre>
9915 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9916 objectclass: top
9917 objectclass: dnsdomain
9918 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9919 dc: tjener
9920 arecord: 10.0.2.2
9921 associateddomain: tjener.intern
9922
9923 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9924 objectclass: top
9925 objectclass: dnsdomain2
9926 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9927 dc: 2
9928 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
9929 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
9930 </pre></blockquote>
9931
9932 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
9933 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
9934 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
9935 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
9936 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
9937 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
9938 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
9939 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
9940 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
9941 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
9942 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
9943 instead.</p>
9944
9945 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
9946 like this:</p>
9947
9948 <blockquote><pre>
9949 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9950   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9951   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9952   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9953   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9954   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9955
9956 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9957   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
9958 </pre></blockquote>
9959
9960 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
9961 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
9962 reverse lookups.</p>
9963
9964 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
9965 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
9966 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
9967 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
9968
9969 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
9970 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
9971 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
9972
9973 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
9974 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
9975 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
9976 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
9977 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
9978
9979 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
9980 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
9981 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
9982 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
9983 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
9984
9985 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
9986 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
9987 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
9988 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
9989 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
9990 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
9991
9992 <blockquote><pre>
9993 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
9994     SUP top
9995     AUXILIARY
9996     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
9997           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
9998           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
9999           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10000           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10001     ))
10002 </pre></blockquote>
10003
10004 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10005 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10006 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10007 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10008 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10009 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
10010
10011 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
10012
10013 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10014 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
10015 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10016 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10017 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
10018
10019 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10020 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10021 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
10022 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
10023
10024 <blockquote><pre>
10025 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10026 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10027 </pre></blockquote>
10028
10029 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10030 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10031 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
10032 search result is this entry:</p>
10033
10034 <blockquote><pre>
10035 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10036 cn: dhcp
10037 objectClass: top
10038 objectClass: dhcpServer
10039 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10040 </pre></blockquote>
10041
10042 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10043 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
10044 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10045 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10046 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10047 The search result is this entry:</p>
10048
10049 <blockquote><pre>
10050 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10051 cn: DHCP Config
10052 objectClass: top
10053 objectClass: dhcpService
10054 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10055 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10056 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10057 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10058 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
10059 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
10060 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
10061 </pre></blockquote>
10062
10063 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
10064 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10065 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10066 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10067 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
10068 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
10069 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10070 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10071 related computer objects.</p>
10072
10073 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10074 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
10075 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10076 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10077 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
10078 like:</p>
10079
10080 <blockquote><pre>
10081 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10082 cn: hostname
10083 objectClass: top
10084 objectClass: dhcpHost
10085 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10086 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10087 </pre></blockquote>
10088
10089 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10090 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10091 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
10092 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10093 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
10094 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10095 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10096 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10097 structural object class.
10098
10099 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
10100
10101 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10102 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
10103 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
10104 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10105 in the configuration.</p>
10106
10107 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10108 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10109 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10110 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10111 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10112 structure.</p>
10113
10114 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10115 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
10116
10117 <blockquote><pre>
10118 ou=services
10119   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10120     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10121     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10122       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10123         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10124     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10125       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10126         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10127     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10128       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10129 </pre></blockquote>
10130
10131 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10132 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10133 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10134 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
10135
10136 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10137 like this:</p>
10138
10139 <blockquote><pre>
10140 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10141 dc: hostname
10142 objectClass: top
10143 objectClass: dhcpHost
10144 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10145 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10146 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10147 arecord: 10.11.12.13
10148 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10149 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10150 </pre></blockquote>
10151
10152 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10153 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10154 auxiliary object class.</p>
10155
10156       </div>
10157       <div class="tags">
10158
10159
10160         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>.
10161
10162
10163       </div>
10164     </div>
10165     <div class="padding"></div>
10166
10167     <div class="entry">
10168       <div class="title">
10169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
10170       </div>
10171       <div class="date">
10172         14th July 2010
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="body">
10175         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10176 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10177 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10178 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10179 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
10180
10181 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10182 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
10183
10184 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10185 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
10186 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10187 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10188 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10189 to a slave DNS server.</p>
10190
10191 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10192 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10193 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10194 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10195 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
10196 seem to work.</p>
10197
10198 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10199 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10200 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
10201 this:</p>
10202
10203 <blockquote><pre>
10204   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10205   cn: hostname
10206   objectClass: dhcphost
10207   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10208   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10209   associateddomain: hostname.intern
10210   arecord: 10.11.12.13
10211   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10212   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10213   ldapconfigsound: Y
10214 </pre></blockquote>
10215
10216 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10217 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10218 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
10219 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
10220
10221 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10222 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10223 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10224 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10225 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10226 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10227 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10228 might be a good place to put it.</p>
10229
10230 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10231 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10232
10233       </div>
10234       <div class="tags">
10235
10236
10237         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>.
10238
10239
10240       </div>
10241     </div>
10242     <div class="padding"></div>
10243
10244     <div class="entry">
10245       <div class="title">
10246         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
10247       </div>
10248       <div class="date">
10249         11th July 2010
10250       </div>
10251       <div class="body">
10252         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10253 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10254 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10255 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
10256
10257 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10258 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
10259 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10260 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10261 LTSP clients.</p>
10262
10263 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10264 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10265 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
10266
10267 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10268 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10269 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
10270
10271 <blockquote><pre>
10272 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10273 #
10274 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10275 #
10276 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10277 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10278 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10279 #
10280 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10281 # existence of attribute names.
10282 #
10283 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10284 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10285 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10286 #
10287 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10288 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
10289 #
10290 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
10291 #     SUP top
10292 #     AUXILIARY
10293 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10294
10295 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10296 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
10297     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10298     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
10299         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
10300         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
10301             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
10302             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10303             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
10304             # bass value on to clients
10305             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
10306         done
10307     done
10308 fi
10309 </pre></blockquote>
10310
10311 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10312 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10313 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10314 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10315 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
10316
10317 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10318 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10319
10320 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10321 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
10322 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
10323 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
10324 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
10325 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
10326
10327       </div>
10328       <div class="tags">
10329
10330
10331         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>.
10332
10333
10334       </div>
10335     </div>
10336     <div class="padding"></div>
10337
10338     <div class="entry">
10339       <div class="title">
10340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
10341       </div>
10342       <div class="date">
10343          9th July 2010
10344       </div>
10345       <div class="body">
10346         <p>Since
10347 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
10348 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10349 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
10350 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
10351 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10352 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
10353 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10354 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
10355 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
10356 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
10357 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
10358 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10359 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
10360
10361       </div>
10362       <div class="tags">
10363
10364
10365         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>.
10366
10367
10368       </div>
10369     </div>
10370     <div class="padding"></div>
10371
10372     <div class="entry">
10373       <div class="title">
10374         <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>
10375       </div>
10376       <div class="date">
10377          3rd July 2010
10378       </div>
10379       <div class="body">
10380         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
10381 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
10382 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
10383 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
10384 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10385 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10386 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
10387 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
10388
10389 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10390 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
10391 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
10392 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10393 publish the difference.</p>
10394
10395 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10396
10397 <blockquote><p>
10398   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10399   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
10400   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10401   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10402   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10403   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10404   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10405   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10406 </p></blockquote>
10407
10408 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10409
10410 <blockquote><p>
10411   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10412   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10413   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
10414   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10415   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
10416   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
10417   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10418   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10419   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10420   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10421   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10422   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
10423   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10424   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
10425   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10426   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10427   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
10428   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10429   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10430   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10431 </p></blockquote>
10432
10433 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10434
10435 <blockquote><p>
10436   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10437   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10438   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10439   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10440   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10441   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10442   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10443   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10444   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10445   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10446   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10447   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10448   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10449   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10450   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10451   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10452   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10453   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10454   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10455   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10456   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10457 </p></blockquote>
10458
10459 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10460
10461 <blockquote><p>
10462   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10463   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10464   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10465 </p></blockquote>
10466
10467 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10468 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10469 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10470 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10471 the difference somewhat.
10472
10473       </div>
10474       <div class="tags">
10475
10476
10477         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>.
10478
10479
10480       </div>
10481     </div>
10482     <div class="padding"></div>
10483
10484     <div class="entry">
10485       <div class="title">
10486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
10487       </div>
10488       <div class="date">
10489         28th June 2010
10490       </div>
10491       <div class="body">
10492         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10493 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10494 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
10495 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10496 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
10497 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10498 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
10499 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10500 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
10501 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
10502
10503 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10504 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10505 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10506 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10507 released.</p>
10508
10509 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
10510 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10511 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
10512 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
10513
10514 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10515 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10516
10517 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10518 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
10519 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10520 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
10521 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
10522
10523       </div>
10524       <div class="tags">
10525
10526
10527         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>.
10528
10529
10530       </div>
10531     </div>
10532     <div class="padding"></div>
10533
10534     <div class="entry">
10535       <div class="title">
10536         <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>
10537       </div>
10538       <div class="date">
10539         24th June 2010
10540       </div>
10541       <div class="body">
10542         <p>A while back, I
10543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
10544 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10545 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10546 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
10547
10548 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10549 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10550 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10551 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
10552
10553 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10554 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10555 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10556 Debian Edu.</p>
10557
10558 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10559 the
10560 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
10561 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10562 available today from IETF.</p>
10563
10564 <pre>
10565 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
10566 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
10567 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
10568  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10569         NAME 'dhcpHost'
10570         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
10571 -       SUP top
10572 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
10573         MUST cn
10574         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10575         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
10576 </pre>
10577
10578 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10579 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10580 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
10581
10582 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10583 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10584
10585       </div>
10586       <div class="tags">
10587
10588
10589         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>.
10590
10591
10592       </div>
10593     </div>
10594     <div class="padding"></div>
10595
10596     <div class="entry">
10597       <div class="title">
10598         <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>
10599       </div>
10600       <div class="date">
10601         16th June 2010
10602       </div>
10603       <div class="body">
10604         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10605 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
10606 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10607 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10608 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10609 this:
10610
10611 <blockquote><pre>
10612 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10613 tasksel --new-install
10614 </pre></blockquote>
10615
10616 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10617 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10618 any output what so ever.
10619
10620 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10621 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10622 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10623 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10624 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10625 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
10626 code like this:
10627
10628 <blockquote><pre>
10629 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10630 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
10631 $cmd
10632 </pre></blockquote>
10633
10634 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
10635 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10636 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10637 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10638 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10639 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10640 installation.</p>
10641
10642 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10643 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10644 like this.</p>
10645
10646       </div>
10647       <div class="tags">
10648
10649
10650         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>.
10651
10652
10653       </div>
10654     </div>
10655     <div class="padding"></div>
10656
10657     <div class="entry">
10658       <div class="title">
10659         <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>
10660       </div>
10661       <div class="date">
10662         13th June 2010
10663       </div>
10664       <div class="body">
10665         <p>My
10666 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
10667 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
10668 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10669 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
10670 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10671 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
10672 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
10673
10674 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10675 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
10676 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
10677 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
10678 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
10679 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
10680 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
10681 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
10682
10683 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
10684 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
10685 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
10686 too surprising.</p>
10687
10688 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
10689 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
10690 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
10691 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
10692 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
10693 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
10694 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
10695 continue.</p>
10696
10697 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
10698 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
10699   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
10700   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
10701   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
10702   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
10703   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
10704   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10705   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10706   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10707   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10708   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10709   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10710   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10711   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10712   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10713   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10714   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10715   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10716   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10717   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10718   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10719   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10720   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10721   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10722   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10723   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10724   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10725   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
10726   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
10727
10728 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
10729
10730 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
10731   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
10732   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
10733   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
10734   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10735   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
10736   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
10737   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
10738   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
10739   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
10740   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10741   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
10742   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10743   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
10744   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
10745   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
10746   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
10747   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
10748   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
10749   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
10750   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
10751   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
10752   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
10753   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
10754   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10755   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
10756   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
10757   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
10758   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
10759   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10760   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10761   zip</p>
10762
10763 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
10764
10765 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
10766   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
10767   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
10768   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
10769   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
10770   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
10771   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10772   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10773   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10774   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10775   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10776   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10777   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10778   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10779   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10780   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10781   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10782   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10783   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10784   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10785   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10786   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10787   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10788   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10789   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10790   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10791   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10792   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
10793
10794 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
10795 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
10796   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10797   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
10798   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
10799   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10800   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
10801   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
10802   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10803   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
10804   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
10805   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
10806   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
10807   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
10808   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
10809   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
10810   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
10811   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10812   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10813   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10814   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
10815   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10816   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
10817   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
10818   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10819   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10820   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
10821   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
10822   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
10823   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
10824   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
10825   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
10826   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
10827   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
10828   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
10829   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10830   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10831   xulrunner-1.9</p>
10832
10833
10834       </div>
10835       <div class="tags">
10836
10837
10838         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>.
10839
10840
10841       </div>
10842     </div>
10843     <div class="padding"></div>
10844
10845     <div class="entry">
10846       <div class="title">
10847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
10848       </div>
10849       <div class="date">
10850         11th June 2010
10851       </div>
10852       <div class="body">
10853         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
10854 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
10855 have been discovered and reported in the process
10856 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
10857 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
10858 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
10859 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
10860 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
10861
10862 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
10863 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
10864 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
10865 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
10866 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
10867 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
10868
10869 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
10870 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
10871 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10872 is created.  The bug report
10873 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
10874 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
10875 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
10876 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
10877 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
10878 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
10879 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
10880 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
10881 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
10882 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
10883 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
10884 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
10885 Debian Squeeze.</p>
10886
10887 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
10888 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
10889 trick:</p>
10890
10891 <blockquote><pre>
10892 #!/bin/sh
10893 set -ex
10894
10895 if [ "$1" ] ; then
10896     desktop=$1
10897 else
10898     desktop=gnome
10899 fi
10900
10901 from=lenny
10902 to=squeeze
10903
10904 exec &lt; /dev/null
10905 unset LANG
10906 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
10907 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
10908 fuser -mv .
10909 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
10910 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10911 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
10912 #!/bin/sh
10913 exit 101
10914 EOF
10915 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
10916 exit_cleanup() {
10917     umount $tmpdir/proc
10918 }
10919 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
10920 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
10921 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
10922
10923 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
10924
10925 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
10926 # to return the correct answers.
10927 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
10928     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
10929
10930 # Include the desktop and laptop task
10931 for test in desktop laptop ; do
10932     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
10933 #!/bin/sh
10934 exit 2
10935 EOF
10936     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
10937 done
10938
10939 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10940 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
10941 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
10942 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
10943
10944 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
10945 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10946 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10947 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
10948 fuser -mv
10949 </pre></blockquote>
10950
10951 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
10952 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
10953 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
10954 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
10955 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
10956 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
10957
10958 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
10959 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
10960 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
10961 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
10962 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
10963 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
10964 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
10965
10966 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
10967 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
10968 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
10969 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
10970 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
10971 packages.</p>
10972
10973       </div>
10974       <div class="tags">
10975
10976
10977         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>.
10978
10979
10980       </div>
10981     </div>
10982     <div class="padding"></div>
10983
10984     <div class="entry">
10985       <div class="title">
10986         <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>
10987       </div>
10988       <div class="date">
10989          6th June 2010
10990       </div>
10991       <div class="body">
10992         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
10993 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
10994 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
10995 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
10996 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
10997 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
10998 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
10999
11000 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11001 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11002 COLUMNS):</p>
11003
11004 <blockquote><pre>
11005 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
11006 previous=N
11007 PREVLEVEL=
11008 RUNLEVEL=
11009 runlevel=S
11010 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11011 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
11012 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11013 </pre></blockquote>
11014
11015 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11016 script.</p>
11017
11018 <blockquote><pre>
11019 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
11020 previous=N
11021 PREVLEVEL=N
11022 RUNLEVEL=S
11023 runlevel=S
11024 </pre></blockquote>
11025
11026 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11027 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
11028 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
11029
11030 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11031 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11032 choice.</p>
11033
11034       </div>
11035       <div class="tags">
11036
11037
11038         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>.
11039
11040
11041       </div>
11042     </div>
11043     <div class="padding"></div>
11044
11045     <div class="entry">
11046       <div class="title">
11047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
11048       </div>
11049       <div class="date">
11050          6th June 2010
11051       </div>
11052       <div class="body">
11053         <p>Via the
11054 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
11055 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
11056 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
11057 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
11058 following the standards wars of today.</p>
11059
11060       </div>
11061       <div class="tags">
11062
11063
11064         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>.
11065
11066
11067       </div>
11068     </div>
11069     <div class="padding"></div>
11070
11071     <div class="entry">
11072       <div class="title">
11073         <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>
11074       </div>
11075       <div class="date">
11076          3rd June 2010
11077       </div>
11078       <div class="body">
11079         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11080 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11081 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
11082 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11083 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
11084
11085 <blockquote><pre>
11086 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11087   vendor                    count
11088   Dell Computer Corporation     1
11089     PowerEdge 1750              1
11090   IBM                           1
11091     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
11092   Intel                         2
11093   [no-dmi-info]                 3
11094 maintainer:~#
11095 </pre></blockquote>
11096
11097 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11098 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
11099 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11100 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
11101 option to list the individual machines.</p>
11102
11103 <p>A larger list is
11104 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
11105 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11106 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
11107 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11108 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11109 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11110 collector.</p>
11111
11112       </div>
11113       <div class="tags">
11114
11115
11116         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>.
11117
11118
11119       </div>
11120     </div>
11121     <div class="padding"></div>
11122
11123     <div class="entry">
11124       <div class="title">
11125         <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>
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="date">
11128          1st June 2010
11129       </div>
11130       <div class="body">
11131         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11132 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
11133 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11134 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11135 wait.</p>
11136
11137 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11138 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
11139 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11140 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11141 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
11142 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
11143
11144 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11145 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11146 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
11147 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11148 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11149 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11150 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
11151 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
11152
11153 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
11154
11155       </div>
11156       <div class="tags">
11157
11158
11159         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>.
11160
11161
11162       </div>
11163     </div>
11164     <div class="padding"></div>
11165
11166     <div class="entry">
11167       <div class="title">
11168         <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>
11169       </div>
11170       <div class="date">
11171         27th May 2010
11172       </div>
11173       <div class="body">
11174         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11175 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11176 issues are known and should be solved:
11177
11178 <p><ul>
11179
11180 <li>The wicd package seen to
11181 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
11182 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
11183 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11184 seem to be on the case.</li>
11185
11186 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
11187 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
11188 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
11189 maintainer is on the case.</li>
11190
11191 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11192 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11193 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
11194 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11195 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11196 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11197 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11198 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
11199
11200 </ul></p>
11201
11202 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11203 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
11204 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11205 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
11206
11207 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11208 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11209 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11210 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
11211
11212 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
11213
11214       </div>
11215       <div class="tags">
11216
11217
11218         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>.
11219
11220
11221       </div>
11222     </div>
11223     <div class="padding"></div>
11224
11225     <div class="entry">
11226       <div class="title">
11227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
11228       </div>
11229       <div class="date">
11230         22nd May 2010
11231       </div>
11232       <div class="body">
11233         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11234 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
11235 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11236 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
11237
11238 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
11239 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11240 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
11241 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11242 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11243 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11244 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
11245 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11246 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
11247 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11248 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11249 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11250 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11251 going to work.</p>
11252
11253 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11254 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11255 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11256 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11257 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
11258 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11259 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
11260 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11261 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11262 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11263 Edu.</p>
11264
11265 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11266 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11267 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11268 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
11269 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11270 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
11271
11272 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11273 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
11274
11275       </div>
11276       <div class="tags">
11277
11278
11279         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>.
11280
11281
11282       </div>
11283     </div>
11284     <div class="padding"></div>
11285
11286     <div class="entry">
11287       <div class="title">
11288         <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>
11289       </div>
11290       <div class="date">
11291         14th May 2010
11292       </div>
11293       <div class="body">
11294         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11295 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11296 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11297 expected, if I am to believe the
11298 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11299 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11300 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11301 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
11302 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11303 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11304 version.</p>
11305
11306 More information about
11307 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11308 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
11309 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11310 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
11311
11312 <blockquote><pre>
11313 CONCURRENCY=none
11314 </pre></blockquote>
11315
11316 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11317 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11318 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11319 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
11320
11321       </div>
11322       <div class="tags">
11323
11324
11325         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>.
11326
11327
11328       </div>
11329     </div>
11330     <div class="padding"></div>
11331
11332     <div class="entry">
11333       <div class="title">
11334         <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>
11335       </div>
11336       <div class="date">
11337         14th May 2010
11338       </div>
11339       <div class="body">
11340         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
11341 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
11342 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
11343 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
11344 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
11345 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
11346 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
11347 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
11348
11349 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
11350 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
11351 this on the collector host:</p>
11352
11353 <blockquote><pre>
11354 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
11355 </pre></blockquote>
11356
11357 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
11358 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
11359
11360 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
11361 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
11362 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
11363 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
11364 written yet.</p>
11365
11366       </div>
11367       <div class="tags">
11368
11369
11370         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>.
11371
11372
11373       </div>
11374     </div>
11375     <div class="padding"></div>
11376
11377     <div class="entry">
11378       <div class="title">
11379         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
11380       </div>
11381       <div class="date">
11382         13th May 2010
11383       </div>
11384       <div class="body">
11385         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
11386 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
11387 has been
11388 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
11389
11390 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
11391 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
11392 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
11393 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11394 based boot system.  Tollef is
11395 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
11396 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
11397 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11398 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11399 at the moment do not.</p>
11400
11401 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11402 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11403 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
11404 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11405 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11406 way forward.</p>
11407
11408 <p>In the mean time, based on the
11409 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11410 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11411 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11412 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11413 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
11414 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11415 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11416 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
11417
11418       </div>
11419       <div class="tags">
11420
11421
11422         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>.
11423
11424
11425       </div>
11426     </div>
11427     <div class="padding"></div>
11428
11429     <div class="entry">
11430       <div class="title">
11431         <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>
11432       </div>
11433       <div class="date">
11434          6th May 2010
11435       </div>
11436       <div class="body">
11437         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11438 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11439 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
11440 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11441 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11442 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
11443 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
11444
11445 <blockquote><pre>
11446 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11447 </pre></blockquote>
11448
11449 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11450 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11451 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
11452 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
11453 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
11454 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
11455 make this happen.</p>
11456
11457 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
11458 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
11459 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
11460 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
11461 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
11462
11463 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
11464 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
11465 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
11466 fix the remaining issues.</p>
11467
11468 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11469 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11470 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11471 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
11472
11473       </div>
11474       <div class="tags">
11475
11476
11477         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>.
11478
11479
11480       </div>
11481     </div>
11482     <div class="padding"></div>
11483
11484     <div class="entry">
11485       <div class="title">
11486         <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>
11487       </div>
11488       <div class="date">
11489         27th July 2009
11490       </div>
11491       <div class="body">
11492         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
11493 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
11494 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
11495 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
11496 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
11497 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
11498 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
11499
11500 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
11501 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
11502 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
11503
11504       </div>
11505       <div class="tags">
11506
11507
11508         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>.
11509
11510
11511       </div>
11512     </div>
11513     <div class="padding"></div>
11514
11515     <div class="entry">
11516       <div class="title">
11517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
11518       </div>
11519       <div class="date">
11520         22nd July 2009
11521       </div>
11522       <div class="body">
11523         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11524 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11525 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
11526 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11527 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11528 the package up to date.</p>
11529
11530 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11531 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
11532 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11533 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11534 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11535 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
11536 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11537 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
11538 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
11539 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11540 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11541 working on the future release.</p>
11542
11543 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11544 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
11545
11546       </div>
11547       <div class="tags">
11548
11549
11550         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>.
11551
11552
11553       </div>
11554     </div>
11555     <div class="padding"></div>
11556
11557     <div class="entry">
11558       <div class="title">
11559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
11560       </div>
11561       <div class="date">
11562         24th June 2009
11563       </div>
11564       <div class="body">
11565         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11566 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11567 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
11568 funded
11569 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
11570 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
11571 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11572 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11573 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11574 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
11575
11576 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11577 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
11578 boot:</p>
11579
11580 <ul>
11581
11582 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
11583
11584 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11585    clock is in UTC.</li>
11586
11587 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11588    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11589    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
11590
11591 </ul>
11592
11593 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11594 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11595 Villegas</a>.
11596
11597 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11598 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11599 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11600 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11601 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11602 using this.</p>
11603
11604 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11605 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11606 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11607 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11608 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11609 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11610 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
11611
11612       </div>
11613       <div class="tags">
11614
11615
11616         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>.
11617
11618
11619       </div>
11620     </div>
11621     <div class="padding"></div>
11622
11623     <div class="entry">
11624       <div class="title">
11625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
11626       </div>
11627       <div class="date">
11628         17th May 2009
11629       </div>
11630       <div class="body">
11631         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
11632 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
11633 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
11634 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
11635 dager siden kom
11636 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
11637 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
11638 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
11639 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
11640 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
11641
11642 <blockquote>
11643 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
11644 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
11645 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
11646 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
11647 </blockquote>
11648
11649 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
11650 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
11651 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
11652 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
11653 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
11654
11655 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
11656 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
11657 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
11658
11659       </div>
11660       <div class="tags">
11661
11662
11663         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>.
11664
11665
11666       </div>
11667     </div>
11668     <div class="padding"></div>
11669
11670     <div class="entry">
11671       <div class="title">
11672         <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>
11673       </div>
11674       <div class="date">
11675          7th May 2009
11676       </div>
11677       <div class="body">
11678         <p>Kom over
11679 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
11680 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
11681 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
11682 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
11683 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
11684 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
11685 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
11686
11687       </div>
11688       <div class="tags">
11689
11690
11691         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>.
11692
11693
11694       </div>
11695     </div>
11696     <div class="padding"></div>
11697
11698     <div class="entry">
11699       <div class="title">
11700         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
11701       </div>
11702       <div class="date">
11703          2nd May 2009
11704       </div>
11705       <div class="body">
11706         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
11707 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
11708 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
11709 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
11710 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
11711 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
11712 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
11713 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
11714 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
11715 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
11716 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
11717 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
11718 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
11719 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
11720 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
11721 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
11722 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
11723 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
11724 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
11725 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
11726
11727 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
11728 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
11729 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
11730 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
11731 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
11732 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
11733 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
11734 betydelige.</p>
11735
11736       </div>
11737       <div class="tags">
11738
11739
11740         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>.
11741
11742
11743       </div>
11744     </div>
11745     <div class="padding"></div>
11746
11747     <div class="entry">
11748       <div class="title">
11749         <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>
11750       </div>
11751       <div class="date">
11752          2nd May 2009
11753       </div>
11754       <div class="body">
11755         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11756 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11757 do not yet know them.</p>
11758
11759 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
11760 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11761 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
11762 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11763 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11764 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11765 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
11766 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
11767 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
11768 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11769 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11770
11771 <p>The second one is
11772 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
11773 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11774 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11775 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11776 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11777 and the company behind it is running
11778 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
11779 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11780 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11781 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
11782 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
11783 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
11784 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11785 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
11786
11787 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11788 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11789 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11790 surrounded by today.</p>
11791
11792       </div>
11793       <div class="tags">
11794
11795
11796         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>.
11797
11798
11799       </div>
11800     </div>
11801     <div class="padding"></div>
11802
11803     <div class="entry">
11804       <div class="title">
11805         <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>
11806       </div>
11807       <div class="date">
11808         28th April 2009
11809       </div>
11810       <div class="body">
11811         <p>Julien Blache
11812 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
11813 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
11814 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11815 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11816 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11817 properties.</p>
11818
11819       </div>
11820       <div class="tags">
11821
11822
11823         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>.
11824
11825
11826       </div>
11827     </div>
11828     <div class="padding"></div>
11829
11830     <div class="entry">
11831       <div class="title">
11832         <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>
11833       </div>
11834       <div class="date">
11835         30th March 2009
11836       </div>
11837       <div class="body">
11838         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11839 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11840 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11841 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11842 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11843 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11844 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11845 application.</p>
11846
11847 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11848 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11849 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11850 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11851 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11852 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11853 blocked from doing so.</p>
11854
11855 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11856 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11857 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11858 requirements change.</p>
11859
11860 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11861 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11862 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
11863
11864       </div>
11865       <div class="tags">
11866
11867
11868         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>.
11869
11870
11871       </div>
11872     </div>
11873     <div class="padding"></div>
11874
11875     <div class="entry">
11876       <div class="title">
11877         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
11878       </div>
11879       <div class="date">
11880         29th March 2009
11881       </div>
11882       <div class="body">
11883         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11884 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11885 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11886 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11887 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11888 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11889 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11890 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11891 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11892 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11893 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11894 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11895 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11896 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11897 now. :)</p>
11898
11899       </div>
11900       <div class="tags">
11901
11902
11903         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>.
11904
11905
11906       </div>
11907     </div>
11908     <div class="padding"></div>
11909
11910     <div class="entry">
11911       <div class="title">
11912         <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>
11913       </div>
11914       <div class="date">
11915         29th March 2009
11916       </div>
11917       <div class="body">
11918         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11919 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11920 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11921 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11922 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11923 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
11924
11925 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
11926 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11927 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11928 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11929 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11930 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11931 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11932 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11933 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11934 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11935 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11936 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11937 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
11938
11939 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11940 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11941 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11942 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
11943
11944 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11945 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
11946
11947 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11948 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11949 new IETF work group?</p>
11950
11951       </div>
11952       <div class="tags">
11953
11954
11955         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>.
11956
11957
11958       </div>
11959     </div>
11960     <div class="padding"></div>
11961
11962     <div class="entry">
11963       <div class="title">
11964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
11965       </div>
11966       <div class="date">
11967         15th February 2009
11968       </div>
11969       <div class="body">
11970         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
11971 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
11972 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
11973 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
11974 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
11975 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
11976 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
11977 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
11978 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
11979 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
11980 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
11981 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
11982
11983       </div>
11984       <div class="tags">
11985
11986
11987         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>.
11988
11989
11990       </div>
11991     </div>
11992     <div class="padding"></div>
11993
11994     <div class="entry">
11995       <div class="title">
11996         <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>
11997       </div>
11998       <div class="date">
11999          7th December 2008
12000       </div>
12001       <div class="body">
12002         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
12003 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
12004 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
12005 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
12006 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
12007 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
12008 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
12009 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
12010
12011 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
12012 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
12013 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
12014 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
12015 of these cards.</p>
12016
12017       </div>
12018       <div class="tags">
12019
12020
12021         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>.
12022
12023
12024       </div>
12025     </div>
12026     <div class="padding"></div>
12027
12028     <div class="entry">
12029       <div class="title">
12030         <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>
12031       </div>
12032       <div class="date">
12033         25th November 2008
12034       </div>
12035       <div class="body">
12036         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
12037 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
12038 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
12039 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
12040 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
12041 notes are available on
12042 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
12043 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
12044 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
12045 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
12046 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
12047 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
12048 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
12049 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
12050 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
12051
12052 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
12053 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
12054
12055       </div>
12056       <div class="tags">
12057
12058
12059         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>.
12060
12061
12062       </div>
12063     </div>
12064     <div class="padding"></div>
12065
12066     <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>
12067     <div id="sidebar">
12068
12069
12070
12071 <h2>Archive</h2>
12072 <ul>
12073
12074 <li>2017
12075 <ul>
12076
12077 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (2)</a></li>
12078
12079 </ul></li>
12080
12081 <li>2016
12082 <ul>
12083
12084 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
12085
12086 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
12087
12088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
12089
12090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
12091
12092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
12093
12094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
12095
12096 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
12097
12098 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
12099
12100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
12101
12102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
12103
12104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
12105
12106 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
12107
12108 </ul></li>
12109
12110 <li>2015
12111 <ul>
12112
12113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
12114
12115 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
12116
12117 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
12118
12119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
12120
12121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
12122
12123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
12124
12125 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
12126
12127 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
12128
12129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
12130
12131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
12132
12133 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
12134
12135 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
12136
12137 </ul></li>
12138
12139 <li>2014
12140 <ul>
12141
12142 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
12143
12144 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
12145
12146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
12147
12148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
12149
12150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
12151
12152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
12153
12154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
12155
12156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
12157
12158 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
12159
12160 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
12161
12162 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
12163
12164 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
12165
12166 </ul></li>
12167
12168 <li>2013
12169 <ul>
12170
12171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
12172
12173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
12174
12175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
12176
12177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
12178
12179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
12180
12181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
12182
12183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
12184
12185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
12186
12187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
12188
12189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
12190
12191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
12192
12193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
12194
12195 </ul></li>
12196
12197 <li>2012
12198 <ul>
12199
12200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
12201
12202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
12203
12204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
12205
12206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
12207
12208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
12209
12210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
12211
12212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
12213
12214 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
12215
12216 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
12217
12218 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
12219
12220 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
12221
12222 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
12223
12224 </ul></li>
12225
12226 <li>2011
12227 <ul>
12228
12229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
12230
12231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
12232
12233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
12234
12235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
12236
12237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
12238
12239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
12240
12241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
12242
12243 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
12244
12245 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
12246
12247 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
12248
12249 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
12250
12251 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
12252
12253 </ul></li>
12254
12255 <li>2010
12256 <ul>
12257
12258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
12259
12260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
12261
12262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
12263
12264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
12265
12266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
12267
12268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
12269
12270 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
12271
12272 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
12273
12274 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
12275
12276 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
12277
12278 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
12279
12280 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
12281
12282 </ul></li>
12283
12284 <li>2009
12285 <ul>
12286
12287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
12288
12289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
12290
12291 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
12292
12293 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
12294
12295 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
12296
12297 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
12298
12299 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
12300
12301 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
12302
12303 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
12304
12305 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
12306
12307 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
12308
12309 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
12310
12311 </ul></li>
12312
12313 <li>2008
12314 <ul>
12315
12316 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
12317
12318 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
12319
12320 </ul></li>
12321
12322 </ul>
12323
12324
12325
12326 <h2>Tags</h2>
12327 <ul>
12328
12329  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
12330
12331  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
12332
12333  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
12334
12335  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
12336
12337  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
12338
12339  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
12340
12341  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
12342
12343  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
12344
12345  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (145)</a></li>
12346
12347  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
12348
12349  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
12350
12351  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (16)</a></li>
12352
12353  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (23)</a></li>
12354
12355  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
12356
12357  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (338)</a></li>
12358
12359  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
12360
12361  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
12362
12363  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (29)</a></li>
12364
12365  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
12366
12367  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
12368
12369  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
12370
12371  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
12372
12373  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (15)</a></li>
12374
12375  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
12376
12377  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
12378
12379  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
12380
12381  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
12382
12383  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
12384
12385  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
12386
12387  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
12388
12389  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (9)</a></li>
12390
12391  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (285)</a></li>
12392
12393  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (183)</a></li>
12394
12395  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
12396
12397  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
12398
12399  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (62)</a></li>
12400
12401  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (97)</a></li>
12402
12403  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
12404
12405  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
12406
12407  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
12408
12409  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
12410
12411  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
12412
12413  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
12414
12415  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
12416
12417  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
12418
12419  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (52)</a></li>
12420
12421  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
12422
12423  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
12424
12425  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (50)</a></li>
12426
12427  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (5)</a></li>
12428
12429  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (11)</a></li>
12430
12431  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (45)</a></li>
12432
12433  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
12434
12435  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
12436
12437  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
12438
12439  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
12440
12441  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
12442
12443  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (39)</a></li>
12444
12445 </ul>
12446
12447
12448     </div>
12449     <p style="text-align: right">
12450  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
12451 </p>
12452
12453   </body>
12454 </html>