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  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         16th April 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
  32 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
  33 Details about the gathering can be found
  34 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
  35 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
  36 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
  37 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
  38 weekend.</p>
  39
  40 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
  41 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
  42 Edu release.</p>
  43
  44 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
  45
  46       </div>
  47       <div class="tags">
  48
  49
  50         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
  51
  52
  53       </div>
  54     </div>
  55     <div class="padding"></div>
  56
  57     <div class="entry">
  58       <div class="title">
  59         <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>
  60       </div>
  61       <div class="date">
  62          3rd April 2013
  63       </div>
  64       <div class="body">
  65         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
  66 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
  67 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
  68 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
  69
  70 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
  71 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
  72 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
  73 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
  74 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
  75 BTS. :)</p>
  76
  77       </div>
  78       <div class="tags">
  79
  80
  81         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>.
  82
  83
  84       </div>
  85     </div>
  86     <div class="padding"></div>
  87
  88     <div class="entry">
  89       <div class="title">
  90         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
  91       </div>
  92       <div class="date">
  93         26th March 2013
  94       </div>
  95       <div class="body">
  96         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
  97 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
  98 font you use when printing.</p>
  99
 100 <p>Three years ago,
 101 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
 102 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
 103 changed their default front from
 104 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
 105 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
 106 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
 107 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
 108 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
 109 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
 110 prints.</p>
 111
 112 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
 113 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
 114 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
 115 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
 116 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
 117 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
 118 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
 119 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
 120 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
 121 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
 122 depend on the documents printed.</p>
 123
 124 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
 125 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
 126 and save some money in the process.</p>
 127
 128 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
 129 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
 130 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
 131 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
 132 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
 133 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
 134 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
 135 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
 136 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
 137
 138       </div>
 139       <div class="tags">
 140
 141
 142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 143
 144
 145       </div>
 146     </div>
 147     <div class="padding"></div>
 148
 149     <div class="entry">
 150       <div class="title">
 151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
 152       </div>
 153       <div class="date">
 154         24th March 2013
 155       </div>
 156       <div class="body">
 157         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
 158 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
 159 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
 160 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
 161 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
 162 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
 163 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
 164 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
 165 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
 166 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
 167 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
 168 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
 169
 170 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
 171 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
 172 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
 173 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
 174 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
 175 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
 176 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
 177 all I had to do was to use the
 178 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
 179 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
 180 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
 181 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
 182 xsltproc/fop (aka
 183 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
 184 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
 185 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
 186 technical detail.</p>
 187
 188 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
 189 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
 190 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
 191 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
 192 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
 193 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
 194
 195 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
 196 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
 197 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
 198 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
 199 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
 200 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
 201 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
 202 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
 203 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
 204
 205 <p><blockquote><pre>
 206 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 207 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 208   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
 209     &lt;hr/&gt;
 210   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 211 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 212 </pre></blockquote></p>
 213
 214 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
 215
 216 <p><blockquote><pre>
 217 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 218 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 219   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
 220     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
 221       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
 222     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
 223   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 224 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 225 </pre></blockquote></p>
 226
 227 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
 228 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
 229 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
 230 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
 231 enough.</p>
 232
 233 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
 234 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
 235 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
 236 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
 237 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
 238 look like this:</p>
 239
 240 <p><blockquote><pre>
 241 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 242 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 243   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
 244     &lt;br/&gt;
 245   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 246 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 247 </pre></blockquote></p>
 248
 249 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
 250
 251 <p><blockquote><pre>
 252 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 253 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
 254   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
 255   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
 256     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
 257   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 258 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 259 </pre></blockquote></p>
 260
 261 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
 262 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
 263 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
 264 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
 265 page.</p>
 266
 267 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
 268 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
 269 github</a>
 270 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
 271 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
 272 days.</p>
 273
 274       </div>
 275       <div class="tags">
 276
 277
 278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 279
 280
 281       </div>
 282     </div>
 283     <div class="padding"></div>
 284
 285     <div class="entry">
 286       <div class="title">
 287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
 288       </div>
 289       <div class="date">
 290         17th March 2013
 291       </div>
 292       <div class="body">
 293         <p>Via
 294 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
 295 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
 296 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
 297 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
 298 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
 299 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
 300 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
 301
 302 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
 303 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
 304
 305 <blockquote>
 306 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
 307 </blockquote>
 308
 309 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
 310
 311 <blockquote>
 312 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
 313 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
 314 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
 315 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
 316 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
 317 </blockquote>
 318
 319 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
 320 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
 321 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
 322 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
 323
 324 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
 325 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
 326
 327 <blockquote>
 328 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
 329 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
 330 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
 331 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
 332 </blockquote>
 333
 334 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
 335 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
 336 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
 337 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
 338 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
 339
 340 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
 341 embedding:</p>
 342
 343 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 344
 345       </div>
 346       <div class="tags">
 347
 348
 349         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 350
 351
 352       </div>
 353     </div>
 354     <div class="padding"></div>
 355
 356     <div class="entry">
 357       <div class="title">
 358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
 359       </div>
 360       <div class="date">
 361          8th March 2013
 362       </div>
 363       <div class="body">
 364         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
 365 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
 366 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
 367 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
 368 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
 369 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
 370 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
 371
 372 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
 373
 374 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
 375 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
 376
 377 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
 378 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
 379 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
 380 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
 381 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
 382 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
 383
 384 <p>Images are available for download at
 385 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
 386
 387 <p>md5sums:
 388 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
 389 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
 390 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
 391
 392 <p>sha1sums:
 393 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
 394 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
 395 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
 396
 397 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
 398
 399 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
 400 2013-03-03:</p>
 401
 402 <ul>
 403   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
 404   <ul>
 405         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
 406         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
 407   </ul></li>
 408   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
 409   <ul>
 410         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
 411         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
 412   </ul></li>
 413   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
 414      <ul>
 415         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
 416         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
 417         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
 418                 Closes: #664596</li>
 419         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
 420                 Closes: #664976</li>
 421         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
 422            <ul>
 423                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
 424                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
 425            </ul></li>
 426         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
 427            <ul>
 428                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
 429                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
 430                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
 431                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
 432                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
 433            </ul></li>
 434         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
 435     </ul>
 436   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
 437     <ul>
 438         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
 439     </ul></li>
 440 </ul>
 441
 442 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
 443 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
 444 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
 445 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
 446
 447 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
 448 mailinglist
 449 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
 450 </p></blockquote>
 451
 452 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
 453
 454       </div>
 455       <div class="tags">
 456
 457
 458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 459
 460
 461       </div>
 462     </div>
 463     <div class="padding"></div>
 464
 465     <div class="entry">
 466       <div class="title">
 467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
 468       </div>
 469       <div class="date">
 470          3rd March 2013
 471       </div>
 472       <div class="body">
 473         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
 474 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
 475 support using
 476 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
 477 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
 478 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
 479 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
 480 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
 481 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
 482 using the GNU LGPL, and
 483 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
 484
 485 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
 486 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
 487 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
 488 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
 489 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
 490 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
 491
 492 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
 493 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
 494 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
 495 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
 496 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
 497 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
 498 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
 499 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
 500 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
 501 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
 502 signal distribution is handled using
 503 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
 504 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
 505 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
 506 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
 507 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
 508 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
 509 them up a bit more first.</p>
 510
 511 <p>The development is coordinated on the
 512 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
 513 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
 514 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
 515 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
 516 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
 517 development.</p>
 518
 519       </div>
 520       <div class="tags">
 521
 522
 523         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</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/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="date">
 535         27th February 2013
 536       </div>
 537       <div class="body">
 538         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
 539 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
 540 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
 541 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
 542 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
 543 (where I am the chair of the board) and
 544 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
 545 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
 546 GNU», with this description:
 547
 548 <p><blockquote>
 549 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
 550 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
 551 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
 552 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
 553 </blockquote></p>
 554
 555 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
 556 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
 557 am really curious how many will show up.  See
 558 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
 559 page</a> for the location details.</p>
 560
 561       </div>
 562       <div class="tags">
 563
 564
 565         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 566
 567
 568       </div>
 569     </div>
 570     <div class="padding"></div>
 571
 572     <div class="entry">
 573       <div class="title">
 574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
 575       </div>
 576       <div class="date">
 577         15th February 2013
 578       </div>
 579       <div class="body">
 580         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
 581 now a great source of free maps available from
 582 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
 583 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
 584 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
 585 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
 586 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
 587 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
 588 page for descriptions).</p>
 589
 590 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
 591 map you can just edit the
 592 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
 593 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
 594
 595       </div>
 596       <div class="tags">
 597
 598
 599         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
 600
 601
 602       </div>
 603     </div>
 604     <div class="padding"></div>
 605
 606     <div class="entry">
 607       <div class="title">
 608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
 609       </div>
 610       <div class="date">
 611         12th February 2013
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="body">
 614         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
 615 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
 616 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
 617 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
 618 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
 619 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
 620 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
 621 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
 622 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
 623 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
 624 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
 625 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
 626 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
 627 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
 628 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
 629 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
 630
 631 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
 632 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
 633 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
 634 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
 635 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
 636 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
 637 fields:</p>
 638
 639 <p><pre>
 640 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
 641 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
 642 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
 643 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
 644 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
 645 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
 646 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
 647 </pre></p>
 648
 649 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
 650 answer regarding
 651 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
 652 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
 653 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
 654 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
 655
 656 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
 657
 658 <p><pre>
 659 BEGIN:VCARD
 660 VERSION:2.1
 661 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
 662 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
 663 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
 664 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
 665 REV:20130212T095000Z
 666 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
 667 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
 668 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
 669 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
 670 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
 671 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
 672 END:VCARD
 673 </pre></p>
 674
 675 <p>The resulting QR code created using
 676 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
 677 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
 678 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
 679 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
 680 system.</p>
 681
 682 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
 683
 684 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
 685 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
 686 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
 687 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
 688
 689 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
 690 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
 691
 692       </div>
 693       <div class="tags">
 694
 695
 696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 697
 698
 699       </div>
 700     </div>
 701     <div class="padding"></div>
 702
 703     <div class="entry">
 704       <div class="title">
 705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
 706       </div>
 707       <div class="date">
 708         10th February 2013
 709       </div>
 710       <div class="body">
 711         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
 712
 713 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
 714 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
 715 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
 716 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
 717 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
 718 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
 719 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
 720 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
 721 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
 722 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
 723 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
 724
 725 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
 726 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
 727 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
 728 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
 729 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
 730 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
 731 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
 732 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
 733 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
 734 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
 735 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
 736 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
 737 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
 738 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
 739 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
 740 ones own
 741 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
 742 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
 743 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
 744 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
 745 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
 746 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
 747 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
 748 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
 749 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
 750 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
 751 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
 752
 753 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
 754 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
 755 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
 756 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
 757 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
 758 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
 759
 760 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
 761 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
 762 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
 763
 764       </div>
 765       <div class="tags">
 766
 767
 768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 769
 770
 771       </div>
 772     </div>
 773     <div class="padding"></div>
 774
 775     <div class="entry">
 776       <div class="title">
 777         <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>
 778       </div>
 779       <div class="date">
 780          2nd February 2013
 781       </div>
 782       <div class="body">
 783         <p>My
 784 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
 785 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
 786 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
 787 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 788 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 789 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 790 version too.</p>
 791
 792 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 793 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 794 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 795 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 796 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
 797 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 798 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 799 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
 800
 801 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 802 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 803 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
 804 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 805 it. :)</p>
 806
 807 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 808 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 809 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 810
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="tags">
 813
 814
 815         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>.
 816
 817
 818       </div>
 819     </div>
 820     <div class="padding"></div>
 821
 822     <div class="entry">
 823       <div class="title">
 824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="date">
 827         22nd January 2013
 828       </div>
 829       <div class="body">
 830         <p>Yesterday, I
 831 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 832 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 833 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 835 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 836 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 837 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 838 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 839 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 840 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 841 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 842 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 843 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 844
 845 <pre>
 846 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 847 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 848 </pre>
 849
 850 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 851 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 852 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 853 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 854
 855 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 856 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 857 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 858 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 859 word.</p>
 860
 861 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 862 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 863 process.</p>
 864
 865 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 866 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 867
 868       </div>
 869       <div class="tags">
 870
 871
 872         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>.
 873
 874
 875       </div>
 876     </div>
 877     <div class="padding"></div>
 878
 879     <div class="entry">
 880       <div class="title">
 881         <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>
 882       </div>
 883       <div class="date">
 884         21st January 2013
 885       </div>
 886       <div class="body">
 887         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 888 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 889 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 890 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 891 it, fetch the
 892 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 893 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 894 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 895 autostart script.</p>
 896
 897 <p>The design is simple:</p>
 898
 899 <ul>
 900
 901 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
 902 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
 903
 904 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
 905 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 906 initially did.</li>
 907
 908 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 909 the APT database, a database
 910 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 911 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 912
 913 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 914 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 915 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 916 package or packages.</li>
 917
 918 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 919 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 920
 921 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 922 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 923
 924 </ul>
 925
 926 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 927 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 928 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 929 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 930
 931 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 932 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 933 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 934 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 935 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 936
 937 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 938 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 939 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 940 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 941 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 942 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 943 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 944 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 945
 946 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 947 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 948 '<tt>svn checkout
 949 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 950 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 951 devscripts package.</p>
 952
 953 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 954 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 955 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 956 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 957 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 958
 959       </div>
 960       <div class="tags">
 961
 962
 963         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>.
 964
 965
 966       </div>
 967     </div>
 968     <div class="padding"></div>
 969
 970     <div class="entry">
 971       <div class="title">
 972         <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>
 973       </div>
 974       <div class="date">
 975         19th January 2013
 976       </div>
 977       <div class="body">
 978         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 979 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 980 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 981 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 982 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 983 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 984 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 985 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 986 not a durable solution.
 987
 988 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 989 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 990
 991 <ul>
 992
 993 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 994   than A4).</li>
 995 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 996 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 997 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 998 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 999 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1000 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1001 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1002 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1003 size).</li>
1004 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1005   X.org packages.</li>
1006 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1007   the time).
1008
1009 </ul>
1010
1011 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1012 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1013 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1014 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1015 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1016 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1017 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1018 still be useful.</p>
1019
1020 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1021 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
1022 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1023 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1024 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1025 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1026
1027       </div>
1028       <div class="tags">
1029
1030
1031         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>.
1032
1033
1034       </div>
1035     </div>
1036     <div class="padding"></div>
1037
1038     <div class="entry">
1039       <div class="title">
1040         <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>
1041       </div>
1042       <div class="date">
1043         18th January 2013
1044       </div>
1045       <div class="body">
1046         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1047 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1048 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1049 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1050 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1051 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1052 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1053
1054 <pre>
1055 #!/usr/bin/python
1056 import sys
1057 import apt
1058 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1059     cache = apt.Cache()
1060     cache.open(None)
1061     thepkgs = []
1062     for pkg in cache:
1063         version = pkg.candidate
1064         if version is None:
1065             version = pkg.installed
1066         if version is None:
1067             continue
1068         record = version.record
1069         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1070             continue
1071         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1072         for t in mime_types:
1073             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1074             if t == mimetype:
1075                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1076     return thepkgs
1077 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1078 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1079     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1080 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1081 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1082     print "  %s" %pkg
1083 </pre>
1084
1085 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1086
1087 <pre>
1088 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1089 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1090   gecko-mediaplayer
1091 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1092 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1093   browser-plugin-gnash
1094 %
1095 </pre>
1096
1097 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1098 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1099 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1100 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1101
1102 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1103 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1104 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1105 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
1106 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1107 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1108
1109       </div>
1110       <div class="tags">
1111
1112
1113         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>.
1114
1115
1116       </div>
1117     </div>
1118     <div class="padding"></div>
1119
1120     <div class="entry">
1121       <div class="title">
1122         <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>
1123       </div>
1124       <div class="date">
1125         16th January 2013
1126       </div>
1127       <div class="body">
1128         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1129 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1130 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1131 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1132 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1133 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1134 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1135 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1136
1137 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1138 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1139 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1140 can be found on the
1141 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1142 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1143 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1144 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1145 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1146
1147 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1148
1149 <pre>
1150   count MIME type
1151   ----- -----------------------
1152      32 text/plain
1153      30 audio/mpeg
1154      29 image/png
1155      28 image/jpeg
1156      27 application/ogg
1157      26 audio/x-mp3
1158      25 image/tiff
1159      25 image/gif
1160      22 image/bmp
1161      22 audio/x-wav
1162      20 audio/x-flac
1163      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1164      18 video/x-ms-asf
1165      18 audio/x-musepack
1166      18 audio/x-mpeg
1167      18 application/x-ogg
1168      17 video/mpeg
1169      17 audio/x-scpls
1170      17 audio/ogg
1171      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1172 </pre>
1173
1174 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1175
1176 <pre>
1177   count MIME type
1178   ----- -----------------------
1179      33 text/plain
1180      32 image/png
1181      32 image/jpeg
1182      29 audio/mpeg
1183      27 image/gif
1184      26 image/tiff
1185      26 application/ogg
1186      25 audio/x-mp3
1187      22 image/bmp
1188      21 audio/x-wav
1189      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1190      19 audio/x-mpeg
1191      18 video/mpeg
1192      18 audio/x-scpls
1193      18 audio/x-flac
1194      18 application/x-ogg
1195      17 video/x-ms-asf
1196      17 text/html
1197      17 audio/x-musepack
1198      16 image/x-xbitmap
1199 </pre>
1200
1201 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1202
1203 <pre>
1204   count MIME type
1205   ----- -----------------------
1206      31 text/plain
1207      31 image/png
1208      31 image/jpeg
1209      29 audio/mpeg
1210      28 application/ogg
1211      27 image/gif
1212      26 image/tiff
1213      26 audio/x-mp3
1214      23 audio/x-wav
1215      22 image/bmp
1216      21 audio/x-flac
1217      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1218      19 audio/x-mpeg
1219      18 video/x-ms-asf
1220      18 video/mpeg
1221      18 audio/x-scpls
1222      18 application/x-ogg
1223      17 audio/x-musepack
1224      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1225      16 video/x-msvideo
1226 </pre>
1227
1228 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1229 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1230 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1231 issues.</p>
1232
1233 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
1234 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
1235
1236       </div>
1237       <div class="tags">
1238
1239
1240         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>.
1241
1242
1243       </div>
1244     </div>
1245     <div class="padding"></div>
1246
1247     <div class="entry">
1248       <div class="title">
1249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
1250       </div>
1251       <div class="date">
1252         15th January 2013
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="body">
1255         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
1256 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
1257 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
1258 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
1259 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1260 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1261 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1262 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1263 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1264 packages.</p>
1265
1266 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1267 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1268 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1269 modalias.</p>
1270
1271 <p><blockquote>
1272 Package: package-name
1273 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
1274 </blockquote></p>
1275
1276 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1277 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
1278
1279 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1280 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
1281
1282 <p><blockquote>
1283 Package: cheese
1284 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
1285 </blockquote></p>
1286
1287 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1288 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
1289
1290 <p><blockquote>
1291 Package: pcmciautils
1292 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1293 </blockquote></p>
1294
1295 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1296 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
1297
1298 <p><blockquote>
1299 Package: colorhug-client
1300 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
1301 </blockquote></p>
1302
1303 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1304 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1305 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1306
1307 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1308 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1309 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1310 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1311 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
1312 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1313 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1314 Raring.</p>
1315
1316 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1317 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1318 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1319 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1320 try the
1321 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
1322 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1323 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1324 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
1325
1326 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1327 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
1328
1329 <p><blockquote>
1330 % ./hw-support-lookup
1331 <br>yubikey-personalization
1332 <br>%
1333 </blockquote></p>
1334
1335 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1336 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
1337
1338 <p><blockquote>
1339 % ./hw-support-lookup
1340 <br>pcmciautils
1341 <br>%
1342 </blockquote></p>
1343
1344 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1345 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1346 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
1347
1348 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1349 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1350 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1351 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1352 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1353 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1354 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1355 see if it work.</p>
1356
1357 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1358 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1359 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1360 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1361
1362       </div>
1363       <div class="tags">
1364
1365
1366         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>.
1367
1368
1369       </div>
1370     </div>
1371     <div class="padding"></div>
1372
1373     <div class="entry">
1374       <div class="title">
1375         <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>
1376       </div>
1377       <div class="date">
1378         14th January 2013
1379       </div>
1380       <div class="body">
1381         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1382 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1383 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1384 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1385 in
1386 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1387 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
1388
1389 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
1390
1391 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1392 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1393 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
1394 &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;,
1395 &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
1396 &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;.
1397
1398 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1399 this shell script:</p>
1400
1401 <pre>
1402 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1403 </pre>
1404
1405 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1406 using modinfo:</p>
1407
1408 <pre>
1409 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1410 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1411 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1412 %
1413 </pre>
1414
1415 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
1416
1417 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1418 Bridge memory controller:</p>
1419
1420 <p><blockquote>
1421 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1422 </blockquote></p>
1423
1424 <p>This represent these values:</p>
1425
1426 <pre>
1427  v   00008086  (vendor)
1428  d   00002770  (device)
1429  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1430  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1431  bc  06        (bus class)
1432  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1433  i   00        (interface)
1434 </pre>
1435
1436 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1437 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1438 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1439 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
1440
1441 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1442 means.</p>
1443
1444 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
1445
1446 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1447 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
1448
1449 <p><blockquote>
1450 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1451 </blockquote></p>
1452
1453 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
1454
1455 <pre>
1456  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1457  p    0001  (device product)
1458  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1459  dc     09  (device class)
1460  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1461  dp     00  (device protocol)
1462  ic     09  (interface class)
1463  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1464  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1465 </pre>
1466
1467 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1468 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1469 these alias entries show up:</p>
1470
1471 <p><blockquote>
1472 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1473 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1474 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1475 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1476 </blockquote></p>
1477
1478 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1479 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1480 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
1481
1482 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
1483
1484 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1485 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
1486
1487 <p><blockquote>
1488 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1489 </blockquote></p>
1490
1491 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1492
1493 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1494
1495 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1496 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1497 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1498
1499 <p><blockquote>
1500 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1501 </blockquote></p>
1502
1503 <p>The values present are</p>
1504
1505 <pre>
1506  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1507  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1508  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1509  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1510  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1511  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1512  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1513  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1514  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1515  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1516  ct   10             (chassis type)
1517  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1518 </pre>
1519
1520 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1521 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1522
1523 <pre>
1524   3 Desktop
1525   4 Low Profile Desktop
1526   5 Pizza Box
1527   6 Mini Tower
1528   7 Tower
1529   8 Portable
1530   9 Laptop
1531  10 Notebook
1532  11 Hand Held
1533  12 Docking Station
1534  13 All In One
1535  14 Sub Notebook
1536  15 Space-saving
1537  16 Lunch Box
1538  17 Main Server Chassis
1539  18 Expansion Chassis
1540  19 Sub Chassis
1541  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1542  21 Peripheral Chassis
1543  22 RAID Chassis
1544  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1545  24 Sealed-case PC
1546  25 Multi-system
1547  26 CompactPCI
1548  27 AdvancedTCA
1549  28 Blade
1550  29 Blade Enclosing
1551 </pre>
1552
1553 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1554 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1555 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1556
1557 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1558
1559 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1560 test machine:</p>
1561
1562 <p><blockquote>
1563 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1564 </blockquote></p>
1565
1566 <p>The values present are</p>
1567
1568 <pre>
1569   ty  01  (type)
1570   pr  00  (prototype)
1571   id  00  (id)
1572   ex  00  (extra)
1573 </pre>
1574
1575 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1576 the valid values are.</p>
1577
1578 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1579
1580 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1581 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1582 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1583 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1584 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1585 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1586 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1587
1588 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1589
1590 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1591 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1592
1593 <pre>
1594   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1595     echo "$id" ; \
1596     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1597   done
1598 </pre>
1599
1600 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1601 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1602
1603 <pre>
1604   acpi:ACPI0003:
1605     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1606   acpi:device:
1607   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1608   acpi:IBM0068:
1609     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1610     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1611     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1612     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1613   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1614     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1615     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1616     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1617   [...]
1618 </pre>
1619
1620 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1621 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1622 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1623 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1624
1625 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1626 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1627 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1628
1629       </div>
1630       <div class="tags">
1631
1632
1633         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>.
1634
1635
1636       </div>
1637     </div>
1638     <div class="padding"></div>
1639
1640     <div class="entry">
1641       <div class="title">
1642         <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>
1643       </div>
1644       <div class="date">
1645         10th January 2013
1646       </div>
1647       <div class="body">
1648         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1649 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1650 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1651 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1652 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1653 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1654 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1655 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1656 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1657 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1658 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1659 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1660 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1661 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1662 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1663 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1664 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1665 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1666
1667       </div>
1668       <div class="tags">
1669
1670
1671         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>.
1672
1673
1674       </div>
1675     </div>
1676     <div class="padding"></div>
1677
1678     <div class="entry">
1679       <div class="title">
1680         <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>
1681       </div>
1682       <div class="date">
1683          9th January 2013
1684       </div>
1685       <div class="body">
1686         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1687 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1688 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1689 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1690 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1691 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1692 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1693 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1694 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1695 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1696 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1697
1698 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1699 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1700 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1701 simple:
1702
1703 <ul>
1704
1705 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1706   starting when a user log in.</li>
1707
1708 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1709   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1710
1711 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1712   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1713   packages.</li>
1714
1715 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1716   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1717
1718 </ul>
1719
1720 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1721 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1722 discover database to find packages and
1723 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1724 packages.</p>
1725
1726 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1727 draft package is now checked into
1728 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1729 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1730 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1731 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1732 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1733 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1734 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1735 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1736 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1737 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1738 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1739 because of the freeze).</p>
1740
1741 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1742 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1743 inserted):</p>
1744
1745 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1746
1747 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1748 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1749 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1750
1751 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1752 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1753 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1754 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1755 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1756 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1757 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1758
1759 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1760 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1761 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1762 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1763 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1764 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1765 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1766 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1767 not be installed?</p>
1768
1769 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1770 please send me an email. :)</p>
1771
1772       </div>
1773       <div class="tags">
1774
1775
1776         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1777
1778
1779       </div>
1780     </div>
1781     <div class="padding"></div>
1782
1783     <div class="entry">
1784       <div class="title">
1785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
1786       </div>
1787       <div class="date">
1788          2nd January 2013
1789       </div>
1790       <div class="body">
1791         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1792 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1793 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1794 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1795 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1796 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1797 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1798 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1799 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1800 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1801
1802 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1803 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1804 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
1805
1806       </div>
1807       <div class="tags">
1808
1809
1810         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>.
1811
1812
1813       </div>
1814     </div>
1815     <div class="padding"></div>
1816
1817     <div class="entry">
1818       <div class="title">
1819         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1820       </div>
1821       <div class="date">
1822         28th December 2012
1823       </div>
1824       <div class="body">
1825         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
1826 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1827 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
1828 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
1829 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
1830 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
1831 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
1832 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
1833 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
1834 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
1835 followed by many others. :)</p>
1836
1837 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
1838 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
1839 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
1840 you want to donate to the project.</p>
1841
1842       </div>
1843       <div class="tags">
1844
1845
1846         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1847
1848
1849       </div>
1850     </div>
1851     <div class="padding"></div>
1852
1853     <div class="entry">
1854       <div class="title">
1855         <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>
1856       </div>
1857       <div class="date">
1858         25th December 2012
1859       </div>
1860       <div class="body">
1861         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1862 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1863
1864 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1865 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1866 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1867 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1868 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1869 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1870 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1871 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1872 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1873 name.</p>
1874
1875 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1876 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1877 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1878
1879 <blockquote><pre>
1880 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1881 cd bitcoin
1882 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1883 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1884 </pre></blockquote>
1885
1886 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1887 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1888 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1889 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1890 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1891 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1892 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1893 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1894 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1895
1896 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1897 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1898 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1899
1900       </div>
1901       <div class="tags">
1902
1903
1904         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>.
1905
1906
1907       </div>
1908     </div>
1909     <div class="padding"></div>
1910
1911     <div class="entry">
1912       <div class="title">
1913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1914       </div>
1915       <div class="date">
1916         21st December 2012
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="body">
1919         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1920 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1921 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1922 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1923 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1924 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1925 is now maintained by a
1926 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1927 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1928 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1929 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1930 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1931 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1932 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1933 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1934 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1935 Corallo in a
1936 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1937 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1938 Debian package.</p>
1939
1940 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1941 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1942 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1943 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1944 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1945 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1946 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1947 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1948 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1949 new version to unstable.
1950
1951 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1952 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1953 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1954 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1955 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1956 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1957 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1958 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1959 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1960 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1961 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1962 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1963 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1964 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1965 have not tested them.</p>
1966
1967 <p>My
1968 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1969 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1970 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1971 years ago, as can be
1972 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1973 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1974 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1975 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1976 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1977 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1978 the same address as last time,
1979 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1980
1981       </div>
1982       <div class="tags">
1983
1984
1985         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>.
1986
1987
1988       </div>
1989     </div>
1990     <div class="padding"></div>
1991
1992     <div class="entry">
1993       <div class="title">
1994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
1995       </div>
1996       <div class="date">
1997         18th December 2012
1998       </div>
1999       <div class="body">
2000         <p>A few days ago I came across
2001 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
2002 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
2003 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
2004 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
2005 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
2006 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
2007 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
2008 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
2009 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
2010
2011 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
2012 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
2013 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
2014 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
2015
2016 <blockquote><pre>
2017 2004-05-27 Book Store
2018       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
2019       Liabilities:Visa
2020 </pre></blockquote>
2021
2022 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
2023 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
2024 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
2025 Spang</a>,
2026 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
2027 Keen</a>,
2028 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
2029 Cantino</a> and
2030 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
2031 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
2032 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
2033 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
2034 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
2035
2036 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
2037 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
2038 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
2039 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
2040 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
2041
2042 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
2043 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
2044 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
2045 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
2046 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
2047 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
2048 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
2049 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
2050 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
2051
2052       </div>
2053       <div class="tags">
2054
2055
2056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2057
2058
2059       </div>
2060     </div>
2061     <div class="padding"></div>
2062
2063     <div class="entry">
2064       <div class="title">
2065         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
2066       </div>
2067       <div class="date">
2068          6th December 2012
2069       </div>
2070       <div class="body">
2071         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
2072 Oslo</a>, we use the
2073 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
2074 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
2075 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
2076 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
2077 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
2078 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
2079 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
2080 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
2081 Python.</p>
2082
2083 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
2084 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
2085 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
2086 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
2087 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
2088 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
2089
2090 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
2091 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
2092 user currently logged in:</p>
2093
2094 <blockquote><pre>
2095 #!/usr/bin/env python
2096 import getpass
2097 import xmlrpclib
2098 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
2099 username = getpass.getuser()
2100 password = getpass.getpass()
2101 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
2102 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
2103 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
2104 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
2105 result = server.logout(sessionid)
2106 print result
2107 </pre></blockquote>
2108
2109 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
2110 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
2111
2112       </div>
2113       <div class="tags">
2114
2115
2116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2117
2118
2119       </div>
2120     </div>
2121     <div class="padding"></div>
2122
2123     <div class="entry">
2124       <div class="title">
2125         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
2126       </div>
2127       <div class="date">
2128         17th November 2012
2129       </div>
2130       <div class="body">
2131         <p>While working on a
2132 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
2133 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
2134 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
2135 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
2136 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
2137 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
2138
2139 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
2140 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
2141 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
2142 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
2143 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
2144 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
2145 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
2146 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
2147 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
2148 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
2149 arguments.</p>
2150
2151 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
2152 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
2153 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
2154 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
2155 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
2156 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
2157 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
2158 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
2159
2160 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
2161 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
2162 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
2163 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
2164 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
2165 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
2166 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
2167 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
2168 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
2169 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
2170 correct right holder.</p>
2171
2172 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
2173 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
2174 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
2175 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
2176 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
2177 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
2178 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
2179 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
2180 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
2181 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
2182 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
2183 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
2184 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
2185 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
2186
2187 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
2188 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
2189 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
2190
2191 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
2192 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
2193
2194       </div>
2195       <div class="tags">
2196
2197
2198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
2199
2200
2201       </div>
2202     </div>
2203     <div class="padding"></div>
2204
2205     <div class="entry">
2206       <div class="title">
2207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
2208       </div>
2209       <div class="date">
2210         14th November 2012
2211       </div>
2212       <div class="body">
2213         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
2214 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2215 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
2216 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
2217 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
2218 the people behind the German
2219 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
2220 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
2221 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
2222
2223 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2224
2225 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
2226 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
2227 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
2228
2229 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
2230 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
2231 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
2232 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
2233 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
2234 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
2235
2236 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
2237 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
2238 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
2239 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
2240 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
2241 relationship management and the communication processes in the
2242 project.</p>
2243
2244 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
2245 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
2246 and a yoga teacher.</p>
2247
2248 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2249 project?</strong></p>
2250
2251 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
2252
2253 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
2254 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
2255 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
2256 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
2257 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
2258 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
2259 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
2260 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
2261 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
2262 parents.</p>
2263
2264 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
2265 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
2266 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
2267 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
2268 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
2269 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
2270 Germany.</p>
2271
2272 <p>For information about our school project you can read
2273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
2274 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
2275
2276 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2277 Edu?</strong></p>
2278
2279 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
2280 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
2281
2282 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
2283 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
2284 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
2285 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
2286 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
2287 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
2288 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
2289 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
2290 teachers, parents...</p>
2291
2292 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2293 Edu?</strong></p>
2294
2295 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
2296 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2297
2298 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
2299 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
2300 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
2301 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
2302 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2303
2304 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
2305 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
2306 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
2307 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
2308 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
2309 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
2310 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2311
2312 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2313
2314 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
2315 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
2316 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
2317 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
2318
2319 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2320 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2321
2322 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
2323 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
2324 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
2325 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
2326 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
2327
2328 <ul>
2329
2330 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
2331 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
2332 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
2333
2334 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
2335 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
2336 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
2337 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
2338 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
2339 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
2340 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
2341
2342 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
2343 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
2344 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
2345 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
2346
2347 </ul>
2348
2349       </div>
2350       <div class="tags">
2351
2352
2353         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2354
2355
2356       </div>
2357     </div>
2358     <div class="padding"></div>
2359
2360     <div class="entry">
2361       <div class="title">
2362         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
2363       </div>
2364       <div class="date">
2365          4th November 2012
2366       </div>
2367       <div class="body">
2368         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
2369 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
2370 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
2371 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
2372 see how a member of the bitcoin community
2373 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
2374 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
2375 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
2376 competition.  My thoughts go to the
2377 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
2378 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
2379 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
2380 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
2381 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
2382
2383 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
2384 that the community already seem to have
2385 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
2386 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
2387 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
2388 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
2389 wealth is available.</p>
2390
2391       </div>
2392       <div class="tags">
2393
2394
2395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2396
2397
2398       </div>
2399     </div>
2400     <div class="padding"></div>
2401
2402     <div class="entry">
2403       <div class="title">
2404         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
2405       </div>
2406       <div class="date">
2407         26th October 2012
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="body">
2410         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
2411 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
2412 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
2413 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
2414 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
2415 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
2416 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
2417 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
2418 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
2419 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
2420 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
2421 it every time.</p>
2422
2423 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
2424 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
2425 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
2426 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
2427 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
2428 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
2429 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
2430 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
2431 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
2432 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
2433 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
2434 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
2435
2436 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
2437 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
2438 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
2439 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
2440 article: First the unplanned outage:
2441
2442 <blockquote><pre>
2443 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
2444 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
2445 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
2446 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
2447 Duration:    40 minutes
2448 Scope:       Exchange 2003
2449 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
2450              a cluster failover.
2451
2452 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
2453              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
2454 Technician:  [xxx]
2455 </pre></blockquote>
2456
2457 Next the planned outage:
2458
2459 <blockquote><pre>
2460 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
2461 Severity:    Major (Planned)
2462 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
2463 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
2464 Duration:    10 hours
2465 Scope:       H2 Transport
2466 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
2467              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
2468              4510s.
2469 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
2470              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
2471              connectivity.
2472 Technician:  [xxx]
2473 </pre></blockquote>
2474
2475 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
2476 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
2477 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
2478 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
2479 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
2480 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
2481 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
2482
2483 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
2484 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
2485 university too.  We do register
2486 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
2487 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
2488 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
2489 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
2490 for other sites to consider too?</p>
2491
2492       </div>
2493       <div class="tags">
2494
2495
2496         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2497
2498
2499       </div>
2500     </div>
2501     <div class="padding"></div>
2502
2503     <div class="entry">
2504       <div class="title">
2505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
2506       </div>
2507       <div class="date">
2508         22nd October 2012
2509       </div>
2510       <div class="body">
2511         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
2512 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
2513 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
2514 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
2515 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
2516 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
2517 background information is available in Norwegian from
2518 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
2519 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
2520 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
2521 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
2522 willing to
2523 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
2524 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
2525 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
2526 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
2527 sounded like
2528 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
2529 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
2530 later.</p>
2531
2532 <p>And thought this action is
2533 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
2534 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
2535 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
2536 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
2537 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
2538 rights.</p>
2539
2540 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
2541 unacceptable terms.  For example
2542 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
2543 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
2544 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
2545 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
2546 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
2547
2548 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
2549 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
2550 restored the account of the user, as reported by
2551 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
2552 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
2553 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
2554 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
2555 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
2556 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
2557 reading two opinions from
2558 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
2559 Phipps</a> and
2560 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
2561 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
2562 details about the original story.</p>
2563
2564       </div>
2565       <div class="tags">
2566
2567
2568         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
2569
2570
2571       </div>
2572     </div>
2573     <div class="padding"></div>
2574
2575     <div class="entry">
2576       <div class="title">
2577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
2578       </div>
2579       <div class="date">
2580         18th October 2012
2581       </div>
2582       <div class="body">
2583         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
2584 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
2585 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
2586 across a marvellous drawing by
2587 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
2588 visualising some of what is going on.
2589
2590 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
2591 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
2592
2593 <blockquote>
2594 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
2595 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
2596 </blockquote>
2597
2598 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
2599 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
2600 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
2601 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
2602 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
2603 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
2604
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="tags">
2607
2608
2609         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2610
2611
2612       </div>
2613     </div>
2614     <div class="padding"></div>
2615
2616     <div class="entry">
2617       <div class="title">
2618         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
2619       </div>
2620       <div class="date">
2621         12th October 2012
2622       </div>
2623       <div class="body">
2624         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
2625 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
2626 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
2627 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
2628 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
2629 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
2630 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
2631 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
2632 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
2633 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
2634 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
2635 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
2636 matter".</p>
2637
2638 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
2639 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
2640 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
2641 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
2642 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
2643 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
2644 to argue its side.</p>
2645
2646 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
2647 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
2648 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
2649 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
2650
2651 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
2652 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
2653 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
2654
2655       </div>
2656       <div class="tags">
2657
2658
2659         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
2660
2661
2662       </div>
2663     </div>
2664     <div class="padding"></div>
2665
2666     <div class="entry">
2667       <div class="title">
2668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
2669       </div>
2670       <div class="date">
2671          3rd October 2012
2672       </div>
2673       <div class="body">
2674         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
2675 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
2676 the computer science book collection available in his local
2677 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
2678 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
2679 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
2680 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
2681 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
2682 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
2683 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
2684 recently published books.</p>
2685
2686 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
2687 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
2688 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
2689 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
2690 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
2691 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
2692 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
2693 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
2694 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
2695 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
2696 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
2697 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
2698 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
2699 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
2700 for the library that evening.</p>
2701
2702 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
2703 going to know that for example
2704 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
2705 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
2706 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
2707 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
2708 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
2709 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
2710 book right away.</p>
2711
2712       </div>
2713       <div class="tags">
2714
2715
2716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2717
2718
2719       </div>
2720     </div>
2721     <div class="padding"></div>
2722
2723     <div class="entry">
2724       <div class="title">
2725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
2726       </div>
2727       <div class="date">
2728         23rd September 2012
2729       </div>
2730       <div class="body">
2731         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
2732 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
2733 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2734 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
2735 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
2736 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
2737
2738 When I started, I
2739 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2740 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
2741 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
2742 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
2743 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
2744 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
2745 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
2746
2747 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2748
2749 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
2750 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
2751 the project files currently available from
2752 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2753
2754 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2755 the updated
2756 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2757 and
2758 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2759 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2760 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2761 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2762
2763       </div>
2764       <div class="tags">
2765
2766
2767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2768
2769
2770       </div>
2771     </div>
2772     <div class="padding"></div>
2773
2774     <div class="entry">
2775       <div class="title">
2776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
2777       </div>
2778       <div class="date">
2779         17th September 2012
2780       </div>
2781       <div class="body">
2782         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
2783 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2784 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
2785 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
2786 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
2787 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
2788 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
2789
2790 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2791
2792 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
2793 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
2794 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
2795 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
2796 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
2797 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
2798 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
2799 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
2800 training is anyway very important</p>
2801
2802 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
2803 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
2804 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
2805 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
2806 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
2807
2808 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2809 project?</strong></p>
2810
2811 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
2812 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
2813 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
2814 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
2815 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
2816 hole.</p>
2817
2818 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2819 Edu?</strong></p>
2820
2821 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
2822 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
2823 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
2824 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
2825 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
2826 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
2827 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
2828 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
2829 hassle.</p>
2830
2831 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2832 Edu?</strong></p>
2833
2834 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
2835 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
2836 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
2837 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
2838 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
2839 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
2840 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
2841 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
2842
2843 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2844
2845 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
2846 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
2847 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
2848 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
2849 has the same...</p>
2850
2851 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
2852 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
2853 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
2854 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
2855
2856 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2857 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2858
2859 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
2860 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
2861 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
2862
2863 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
2864 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
2865 don't.</p>
2866
2867 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
2868 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
2869 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
2870 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
2871 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
2872 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
2873 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
2874
2875       </div>
2876       <div class="tags">
2877
2878
2879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2880
2881
2882       </div>
2883     </div>
2884     <div class="padding"></div>
2885
2886     <div class="entry">
2887       <div class="title">
2888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
2889       </div>
2890       <div class="date">
2891         15th September 2012
2892       </div>
2893       <div class="body">
2894         <p>After the
2895 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
2896 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
2897 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
2898 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
2899 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
2900 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
2901 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
2902 was
2903 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
2904 formal working group should be formed.</p>
2905
2906 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
2907 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
2908 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
2909 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
2910 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
2911 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
2912 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
2913 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
2914
2915 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
2916 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
2917 IETF.</p>
2918
2919       </div>
2920       <div class="tags">
2921
2922
2923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2924
2925
2926       </div>
2927     </div>
2928     <div class="padding"></div>
2929
2930     <div class="entry">
2931       <div class="title">
2932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
2933       </div>
2934       <div class="date">
2935         12th September 2012
2936       </div>
2937       <div class="body">
2938         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
2939 publication of of
2940 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
2941 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
2942 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
2943 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
2944 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
2945 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
2946 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
2947 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
2948 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
2949 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
2950
2951 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
2952 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
2953 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
2954 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
2955
2956 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
2957 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
2958
2959       </div>
2960       <div class="tags">
2961
2962
2963         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2964
2965
2966       </div>
2967     </div>
2968     <div class="padding"></div>
2969
2970     <div class="entry">
2971       <div class="title">
2972         <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>
2973       </div>
2974       <div class="date">
2975          7th September 2012
2976       </div>
2977       <div class="body">
2978         <p>As I
2979 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2980 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2981 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2982 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2983 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2984
2985 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2986 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2987 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2988 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2989
2990 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2991 PostScript formats at
2992 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2993 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2994
2995       </div>
2996       <div class="tags">
2997
2998
2999         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>.
3000
3001
3002       </div>
3003     </div>
3004     <div class="padding"></div>
3005
3006     <div class="entry">
3007       <div class="title">
3008         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
3009       </div>
3010       <div class="date">
3011         23rd August 2012
3012       </div>
3013       <div class="body">
3014         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
3015 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
3016 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
3017 revisit the great site
3018 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
3019 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
3020 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
3021
3022       </div>
3023       <div class="tags">
3024
3025
3026         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
3027
3028
3029       </div>
3030     </div>
3031     <div class="padding"></div>
3032
3033     <div class="entry">
3034       <div class="title">
3035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
3036       </div>
3037       <div class="date">
3038         17th August 2012
3039       </div>
3040       <div class="body">
3041         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
3042 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3043 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3044 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
3045 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
3046 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
3047 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
3048 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
3049 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
3050 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
3051 summer I
3052 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
3053 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
3054 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
3055
3056 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
3057 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
3058 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
3059 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
3060 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
3061 progress:</p>
3062
3063 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
3064
3065 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
3066 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
3067 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
3068 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
3069 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
3070 english version of the docbook source.</p>
3071
3072 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
3073 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
3074 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
3075 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
3076 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
3077 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
3078 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
3079 project files currently available from <a
3080 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3081
3082 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3083 the updated
3084 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
3085 and
3086 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3087 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
3088 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3089 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
3090
3091       </div>
3092       <div class="tags">
3093
3094
3095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3096
3097
3098       </div>
3099     </div>
3100     <div class="padding"></div>
3101
3102     <div class="entry">
3103       <div class="title">
3104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
3105       </div>
3106       <div class="date">
3107         10th August 2012
3108       </div>
3109       <div class="body">
3110         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
3111 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
3112 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
3113 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
3114 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
3115 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
3116 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
3117 case for the language
3118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
3119 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
3120
3121 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
3122 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
3123 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
3124 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
3125 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
3126
3127 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
3128 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
3129 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
3130 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
3131 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
3132 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
3133 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
3134 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
3135 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
3136 alias for 'nb'.</p>
3137
3138 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
3139 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
3140 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
3141 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
3142 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
3143 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
3144 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
3145 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
3146 at the same time. :(</p>
3147
3148 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
3149 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
3150 processors. :(</p>
3151
3152 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
3153
3154       </div>
3155       <div class="tags">
3156
3157
3158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3159
3160
3161       </div>
3162     </div>
3163     <div class="padding"></div>
3164
3165     <div class="entry">
3166       <div class="title">
3167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="date">
3170         31st July 2012
3171       </div>
3172       <div class="body">
3173         <p>I tried to send this text to the
3174 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
3175 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
3176 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
3177 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
3178 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
3179 out.</p>
3180
3181 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
3182 learning curve at the moment.</p>
3183
3184 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
3185 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
3186 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
3187 available from
3188 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
3189 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
3190 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
3191 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
3192 Squeeze.</p>
3193
3194 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
3195 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
3196 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
3197 problems.</p>
3198
3199 <ul>
3200
3201 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
3202    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
3203    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
3204    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
3205    index references spanning several pages (See
3206    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
3207    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
3208    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
3209
3210 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
3211    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
3212    #683163</a>).</li>
3213
3214 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
3215    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
3216    footnote and text body, see
3217    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
3218    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
3219    refs listed are not right).</li>
3220
3221 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
3222
3223 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
3224    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
3225
3226 </ul>
3227
3228 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
3229 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
3230 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
3231
3232 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
3233
3234       </div>
3235       <div class="tags">
3236
3237
3238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3239
3240
3241       </div>
3242     </div>
3243     <div class="padding"></div>
3244
3245     <div class="entry">
3246       <div class="title">
3247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
3248       </div>
3249       <div class="date">
3250         21st July 2012
3251       </div>
3252       <div class="body">
3253         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
3254 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
3255 norwegian version</a> of the book
3256 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
3257 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
3258 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
3259 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
3260 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3261
3262 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
3263 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
3264 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
3265 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
3266 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
3267 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
3268 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
3269 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
3270 print. :)</p>
3271
3272 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
3273 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
3274 language.</p>
3275
3276       </div>
3277       <div class="tags">
3278
3279
3280         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3281
3282
3283       </div>
3284     </div>
3285     <div class="padding"></div>
3286
3287     <div class="entry">
3288       <div class="title">
3289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
3290       </div>
3291       <div class="date">
3292         16th July 2012
3293       </div>
3294       <div class="body">
3295         <p>I am currently working on a
3296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
3297 to translate</a> the book
3298 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
3299 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
3300 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
3301 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
3302 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
3303 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
3304 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3305
3306 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
3307 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
3308 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
3309 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
3310 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
3311 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
3312 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
3313 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
3314 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
3315
3316       </div>
3317       <div class="tags">
3318
3319
3320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3321
3322
3323       </div>
3324     </div>
3325     <div class="padding"></div>
3326
3327     <div class="entry">
3328       <div class="title">
3329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
3330       </div>
3331       <div class="date">
3332          9th July 2012
3333       </div>
3334       <div class="body">
3335         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3336 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
3337 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
3338 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
3339 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
3340 to adjust and scale the just released
3341 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3342 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
3343 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
3344
3345 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3346
3347 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
3348 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
3349 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
3350 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
3351 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
3352 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
3353 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
3354 perspective when working with IT.</p>
3355
3356 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3357 project?</strong></p>
3358
3359 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
3360 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
3361 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
3362 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
3363 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
3364 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
3365
3366 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3367 Edu?</strong></p>
3368
3369 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
3370 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
3371 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
3372 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
3373 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
3374 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
3375 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
3376 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
3377 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
3378 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
3379 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
3380 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
3381 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
3382 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
3383 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
3384 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
3385 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
3386 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
3387 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
3388 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
3389 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
3390 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
3391 quicker to update.
3392
3393 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3394 Edu?</strong></p>
3395
3396 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
3397 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
3398 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
3399 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
3400 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
3401 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
3402
3403 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
3404 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
3405 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
3406 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
3407 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
3408 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
3409 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
3410 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
3411 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
3412 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
3413 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
3414 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
3415 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
3416 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
3417 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
3418
3419 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
3420 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
3421 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
3422 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
3423 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
3424 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
3425 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
3426 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
3427
3428 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
3429 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
3430 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
3431 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
3432 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
3433 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
3434 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
3435 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
3436 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
3437 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
3438 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
3439 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
3440 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
3441 sound file.</p>
3442
3443 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
3444 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
3445 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
3446 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
3447 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
3448 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
3449 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
3450 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
3451 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
3452
3453 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3454
3455 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
3456 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
3457 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
3458 )</p>
3459
3460 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3461 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3462
3463 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
3464 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
3465 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
3466 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
3467 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
3468 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
3469 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
3470 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
3471 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
3472 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
3473 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
3474 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
3475 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
3476 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
3477 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
3478
3479 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
3480 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
3481 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
3482 management with Airtime</a>,
3483 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
3484 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
3485 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
3486 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
3487 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
3488
3489       </div>
3490       <div class="tags">
3491
3492
3493         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3494
3495
3496       </div>
3497     </div>
3498     <div class="padding"></div>
3499
3500     <div class="entry">
3501       <div class="title">
3502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
3503       </div>
3504       <div class="date">
3505          8th July 2012
3506       </div>
3507       <div class="body">
3508         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
3509 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
3510 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
3511 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
3512 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
3513 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
3514 Steinberg in his blog post
3515 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
3516 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
3517 spending of your tax money.</p>
3518
3519 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
3520 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
3521 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
3522 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
3523 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
3524 purchases.</p>
3525
3526       </div>
3527       <div class="tags">
3528
3529
3530         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3531
3532
3533       </div>
3534     </div>
3535     <div class="padding"></div>
3536
3537     <div class="entry">
3538       <div class="title">
3539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
3540       </div>
3541       <div class="date">
3542          7th July 2012
3543       </div>
3544       <div class="body">
3545         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3546 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
3547 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
3548 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
3549 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
3550 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
3551 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
3552 receive.  The software is
3553
3554 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
3555 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
3556 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
3557 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
3558 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
3559 Windows</a>.</p>
3560
3561 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
3562 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
3563
3564 <p><ul>
3565
3566   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
3567     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
3568
3569   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
3570     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
3571     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
3572     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
3573     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
3574     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
3575     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
3576     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
3577     </li>
3578
3579   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
3580     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
3581
3582   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
3583     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
3584
3585   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
3586     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
3587
3588   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
3589
3590   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
3591     formats </li>
3592
3593   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
3594     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
3595     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
3596     (as separate sets)</li>
3597
3598   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
3599     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
3600     percentage)</li>
3601
3602   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
3603     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
3604     memory):
3605     <ul>
3606       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
3607       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
3608       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
3609       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
3610       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
3611       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
3612       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
3613       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
3614       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
3615       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
3616           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
3617           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
3618           activity)</li>
3619       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
3620       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
3621     </ul></li>
3622
3623   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
3624     <ul>
3625       <li>Break periods</li>
3626       <li>For teacher(s):
3627         <ul>
3628           <li>Not available periods</li>
3629           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
3630           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
3631           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
3632           <li>Min hours daily</li>
3633           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
3634
3635           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3636             days per week</li>
3637         </ul></li>
3638       <li>For students (sets):
3639         <ul>
3640           <li>Not available periods</li>
3641           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
3642           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
3643           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
3644           <li>Min hours daily</li>
3645           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
3646
3647           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3648             days per week</li>
3649         </ul></li>
3650       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
3651         <ul>
3652           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
3653           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
3654           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
3655           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
3656           <li>End(s) students day</li>
3657           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
3658           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
3659             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
3660           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
3661           <li>Not overlapping</li>
3662           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
3663           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
3664         </ul></li>
3665     </ul></li>
3666
3667   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
3668     <ul>
3669       <li>Room not available periods</li>
3670       <li>For teacher(s):
3671         <ul>
3672           <li>Home room(s)</li>
3673           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
3674           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
3675         </ul>
3676       </li>
3677
3678       <li>For students (sets):
3679         <ul>
3680           <li>Home room(s)</li>
3681           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
3682           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
3683         </ul>
3684       </li>
3685       <li>Preferred room(s):
3686         <ul>
3687           <li>For a subject</li>
3688           <li>For an activity tag</li>
3689           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
3690           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
3691         </ul>
3692       </li>
3693
3694       <li>For a set of activities:
3695         <ul>
3696           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
3697         </ul>
3698       </li>
3699     </ul>
3700   </li>
3701 </ul></p>
3702
3703 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
3704 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
3705 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
3706 manually, check it out.
3707
3708 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
3709 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
3710 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
3711 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
3712 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
3713 section</a>.</p>
3714
3715       </div>
3716       <div class="tags">
3717
3718
3719         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3720
3721
3722       </div>
3723     </div>
3724     <div class="padding"></div>
3725
3726     <div class="entry">
3727       <div class="title">
3728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
3729       </div>
3730       <div class="date">
3731          3rd July 2012
3732       </div>
3733       <div class="body">
3734         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
3735 project (Norwegian version of
3736 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
3737 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
3738 a problem with the municipalities using
3739 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
3740 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
3741 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
3742 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
3743 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
3744 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
3745 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
3746 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
3747 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
3748 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
3749 the From: header.</p>
3750
3751 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
3752 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
3753 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
3754 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
3755 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
3756 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
3757 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
3758 behaviour.</p>
3759
3760 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
3761 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
3762 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
3763 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
3764 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
3765 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
3766 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
3767
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="tags">
3770
3771
3772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3773
3774
3775       </div>
3776     </div>
3777     <div class="padding"></div>
3778
3779     <div class="entry">
3780       <div class="title">
3781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="date">
3784         26th June 2012
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="body">
3787         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
3788 another interview with the people behind
3789 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
3790 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
3791 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
3792 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
3793 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
3794 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3795 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3796
3797 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3798
3799 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
3800 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
3801 ICT in schools</p>
3802
3803 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3804 project?</strong></p>
3805
3806 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3807 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3808 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3809 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
3810
3811 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3812 Edu?</strong></p>
3813
3814 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3815 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3816 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3817 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
3818
3819 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3820 Edu?</strong></p>
3821
3822 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3823 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
3824 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3825 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3826 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
3827 technologies in school.</p>
3828
3829 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3830
3831 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
3832 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
3833 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
3834
3835 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3836 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3837
3838 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
3839 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
3840 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
3841 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
3842
3843 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
3844 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
3845 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
3846
3847 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
3848 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
3849 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
3850 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
3851 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
3852 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
3853 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
3854 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
3855 working there.</p>
3856
3857       </div>
3858       <div class="tags">
3859
3860
3861         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3862
3863
3864       </div>
3865     </div>
3866     <div class="padding"></div>
3867
3868     <div class="entry">
3869       <div class="title">
3870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
3871       </div>
3872       <div class="date">
3873         24th June 2012
3874       </div>
3875       <div class="body">
3876         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3877 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
3878 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
3879 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3880 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3881 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
3882 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3883 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3884 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
3885 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
3886 missing in my book.</p>
3887
3888 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3889 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3890 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3891 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
3892 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
3893 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
3894 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
3895
3896       </div>
3897       <div class="tags">
3898
3899
3900         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>.
3901
3902
3903       </div>
3904     </div>
3905     <div class="padding"></div>
3906
3907     <div class="entry">
3908       <div class="title">
3909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
3910       </div>
3911       <div class="date">
3912         11th June 2012
3913       </div>
3914       <div class="body">
3915         <p>During my work on
3916 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
3917 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
3918 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
3919 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
3920 explanation.</p>
3921
3922 <p><ul>
3923
3924 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
3925 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
3926 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
3927 system depend on tasksel tasks in
3928 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
3929 installation.</li>
3930
3931 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
3932 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
3933 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
3934 at least try to enable it for these services:
3935 <ul>
3936
3937   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
3938     quotas.</li>
3939   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
3940   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
3941   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
3942   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
3943   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
3944
3945 </ul></li>
3946
3947 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
3948 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
3949 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
3950 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
3951
3952 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
3953 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
3954 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
3955
3956 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
3957 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
3958 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
3959 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
3960 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
3961 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
3962
3963 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
3964 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
3965 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
3966 in Wheezy.
3967
3968 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
3969 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
3970 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
3971
3972 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
3973 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
3974 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
3975 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
3976
3977 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
3978 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
3979 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
3980 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
3981
3982 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
3983 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
3984 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
3985
3986 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
3987 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
3988 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
3989
3990 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
3991 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
3992 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
3993 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
3994 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
3995
3996 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
3997 <ul>
3998
3999 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
4000 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
4001 <li>and probably more?</li>
4002 </ul></li>
4003
4004 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
4005 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
4006 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
4007 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
4008 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
4009 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
4010 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
4011 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
4012
4013
4014 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
4015 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
4016 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
4017 use.</li>
4018
4019 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
4020 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
4021 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
4022 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
4023 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
4024
4025 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
4026 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
4027 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
4028 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
4029 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
4030 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
4031
4032 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
4033 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
4034 There are at least three implementations,
4035 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
4036 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
4037 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
4038 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
4039 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
4040 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
4041 given room.</li>
4042
4043 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
4044 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
4045 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
4046 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
4047 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
4048 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
4049 investigated.</li>
4050
4051 </ul></p>
4052
4053 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
4054 version.</p>
4055
4056       </div>
4057       <div class="tags">
4058
4059
4060         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4061
4062
4063       </div>
4064     </div>
4065     <div class="padding"></div>
4066
4067     <div class="entry">
4068       <div class="title">
4069         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
4070       </div>
4071       <div class="date">
4072          9th June 2012
4073       </div>
4074       <div class="body">
4075         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
4076 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
4077 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
4078 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
4079 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
4080 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
4081 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
4082 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
4083 be willing to pay for.</p>
4084
4085 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
4086 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
4087 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
4088 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
4089 Orwell</a>.</p>
4090
4091       </div>
4092       <div class="tags">
4093
4094
4095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4096
4097
4098       </div>
4099     </div>
4100     <div class="padding"></div>
4101
4102     <div class="entry">
4103       <div class="title">
4104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
4105       </div>
4106       <div class="date">
4107          6th June 2012
4108       </div>
4109       <div class="body">
4110         <p>A few days ago
4111 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
4112 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
4113 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
4114 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
4115 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
4116 code for HP, Dell and IBM
4117 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
4118 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
4119 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
4120 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
4121 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
4122
4123 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
4124 output:
4125
4126 <blockquote><pre>
4127 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
4128 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
4129 %
4130 </pre></blockquote>
4131
4132 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
4133 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
4134 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
4135
4136       </div>
4137       <div class="tags">
4138
4139
4140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4141
4142
4143       </div>
4144     </div>
4145     <div class="padding"></div>
4146
4147     <div class="entry">
4148       <div class="title">
4149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
4150       </div>
4151       <div class="date">
4152          2nd June 2012
4153       </div>
4154       <div class="body">
4155         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
4156 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4157 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
4158 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
4159 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4160 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4161
4162 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4163
4164 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
4165 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
4166 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
4167 by Angela).</p>
4168
4169 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
4170 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
4171 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
4172 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
4173 becoming an osteopath.</p>
4174
4175 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
4176 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
4177 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
4178 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
4179 skills with communication skills.</p>
4180
4181 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4182 project?</strong></p>
4183
4184 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
4185 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
4186 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
4187 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
4188 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
4189
4190 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
4191 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
4192 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
4193 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
4194 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
4195 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
4196 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
4197 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
4198 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
4199
4200 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
4201 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
4202 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
4203
4204 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
4205
4206 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
4207 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
4208 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
4209 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
4210 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
4211 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
4212 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
4213 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
4214 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
4215 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
4216 point.</p>
4217
4218 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
4219 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
4220 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
4221 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
4222 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
4223 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
4224
4225 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
4226 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
4227 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
4228 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
4229 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
4230 spare time.</p>
4231
4232 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
4233 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
4234 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
4235 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
4236 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
4237
4238 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
4239 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
4240 avoidance do exist.</p>
4241
4242 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
4243 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
4244 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
4245 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
4246 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
4247 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
4248 and probably a gain for all.</p>
4249
4250 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4251 Edu?</strong></p>
4252
4253 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
4254 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
4255 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
4256 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
4257 project communication, honest communication within the group of
4258 developers, etc.</p>
4259
4260 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4261 Edu?</strong></p>
4262
4263 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
4264
4265 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
4266 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
4267 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
4268 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
4269 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
4270 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
4271 contribute).</p>
4272
4273 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
4274 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
4275 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
4276 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
4277 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
4278 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
4279 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
4280 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
4281 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
4282 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
4283
4284 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4285
4286 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
4287
4288 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
4289 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
4290 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
4291
4292 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
4293 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
4294 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
4295 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
4296
4297 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
4298 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
4299 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
4300 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
4301 whiteboard.</p>
4302
4303 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
4304
4305 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4306 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4307
4308 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
4309 enrol people.</p>
4310
4311       </div>
4312       <div class="tags">
4313
4314
4315         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4316
4317
4318       </div>
4319     </div>
4320     <div class="padding"></div>
4321
4322     <div class="entry">
4323       <div class="title">
4324         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
4325       </div>
4326       <div class="date">
4327          1st June 2012
4328       </div>
4329       <div class="body">
4330         <p>A few years ago I wrote
4331 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
4332 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
4333 I have learned from colleges here at the
4334 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
4335 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
4336 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
4337 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
4338 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
4339
4340 <p><pre>
4341 use strict;
4342 use warnings;
4343 use SOAP::Lite;
4344 use Data::Dumper;
4345 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
4346 my $App = 'test';
4347 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
4348 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
4349 my $s = SOAP::Lite
4350     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
4351     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
4352     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
4353     ;
4354 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
4355     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
4356     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
4357     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
4358 );
4359 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
4360 </pre></p>
4361
4362 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
4363
4364 <p><pre>
4365 $VAR1 = {
4366           'Asset' => {
4367                      'Entitlements' => {
4368                                        'EntitlementData' => [
4369                                                             {
4370                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
4371                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
4372                                                               'Provider' => '',
4373                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
4374                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
4375                                                             },
4376                                                             {
4377                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
4378                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
4379                                                               'Provider' => '',
4380                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
4381                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
4382                                                             },
4383                                                             {
4384                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
4385                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
4386                                                               'Provider' => '',
4387                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
4388                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
4389                                                             }
4390                                                           ]
4391                                      },
4392                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
4393                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
4394                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
4395                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
4396                                           'Buid' => '2323',
4397                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
4398                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
4399                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
4400                                         }
4401                    }
4402         };
4403 </pre></p>
4404
4405 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
4406 service outside the
4407 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
4408 documentation</a>, and according to
4409 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
4410 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
4411 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
4412
4413 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
4414 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
4415
4416       </div>
4417       <div class="tags">
4418
4419
4420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4421
4422
4423       </div>
4424     </div>
4425     <div class="padding"></div>
4426
4427     <div class="entry">
4428       <div class="title">
4429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
4430       </div>
4431       <div class="date">
4432         31st May 2012
4433       </div>
4434       <div class="body">
4435         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
4436 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
4437 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
4438 running Debian Squeeze, where
4439 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
4440 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
4441 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
4442 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
4443 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
4444 another day.</p>
4445
4446 <p>After calibration, I get a
4447 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
4448 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
4449 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
4450 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
4451 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
4452 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
4453 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
4454 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
4455 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
4456 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
4457 and a simple</p>
4458
4459 <p><pre>
4460 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
4461 </pre></p>
4462
4463 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
4464 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
4465 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
4466 enough for now.</p>
4467
4468       </div>
4469       <div class="tags">
4470
4471
4472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4473
4474
4475       </div>
4476     </div>
4477     <div class="padding"></div>
4478
4479     <div class="entry">
4480       <div class="title">
4481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
4482       </div>
4483       <div class="date">
4484         27th May 2012
4485       </div>
4486       <div class="body">
4487         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
4488 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4489 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
4490 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
4491 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
4492 since then, helping to make sure the
4493 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4494 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
4495
4496 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4497
4498 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
4499 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
4500 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
4501 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
4502 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
4503 our computer network.</p>
4504
4505 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
4506 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
4507 (4 months).</p>
4508
4509 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4510 project?</strong></p>
4511
4512 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
4513 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
4514 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
4515 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
4516 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
4517 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
4518 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
4519 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
4520 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
4521 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
4522 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
4523 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
4524 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
4525 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
4526
4527 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4528 Edu?</strong></p>
4529
4530 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
4531 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
4532 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
4533 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
4534 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
4535 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
4536 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
4537 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
4538
4539 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4540 Edu?</strong></p>
4541
4542 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
4543 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
4544 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
4545 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
4546 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
4547 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
4548 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
4549 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
4550 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
4551 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
4552 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
4553 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
4554
4555 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4556
4557 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
4558 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
4559 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
4560
4561 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4562 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4563
4564 <p><ol>
4565
4566 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
4567 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
4568 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
4569 developing.</li>
4570
4571 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
4572 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
4573 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
4574 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
4575 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
4576
4577 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
4578 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
4579 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
4580
4581 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
4582 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
4583 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
4584 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
4585
4586 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
4587 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
4588 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
4589
4590 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
4591
4592 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
4593 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
4594 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
4595 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
4596
4597 </ol></p>
4598
4599       </div>
4600       <div class="tags">
4601
4602
4603         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4604
4605
4606       </div>
4607     </div>
4608     <div class="padding"></div>
4609
4610     <div class="entry">
4611       <div class="title">
4612         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
4613       </div>
4614       <div class="date">
4615         26th May 2012
4616       </div>
4617       <div class="body">
4618         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
4619 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
4620 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
4621 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
4622 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
4623
4624 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
4625 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
4626 comment:</p>
4627
4628 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
4629 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
4630 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
4631 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
4632 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
4633 </blockquote></p>
4634
4635 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
4636 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
4637 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
4638 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
4639 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
4640 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
4641 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
4642 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
4643 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
4644 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
4645 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
4646 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
4647 of wasted effort.</p>
4648
4649 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
4650 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
4651 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
4652
4653 <p>See
4654 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
4655 and
4656 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
4657 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
4658 </blockquote></p>
4659
4660       </div>
4661       <div class="tags">
4662
4663
4664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4665
4666
4667       </div>
4668     </div>
4669     <div class="padding"></div>
4670
4671     <div class="entry">
4672       <div class="title">
4673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
4674       </div>
4675       <div class="date">
4676         18th May 2012
4677       </div>
4678       <div class="body">
4679         <p>In january, I
4680 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
4681 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
4682 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
4683 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
4684 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
4685 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
4686 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
4687 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
4688 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
4689 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
4690
4691 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
4692 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
4693 drivers. :)</p>
4694
4695       </div>
4696       <div class="tags">
4697
4698
4699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4700
4701
4702       </div>
4703     </div>
4704     <div class="padding"></div>
4705
4706     <div class="entry">
4707       <div class="title">
4708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
4709       </div>
4710       <div class="date">
4711         13th May 2012
4712       </div>
4713       <div class="body">
4714         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
4715 publish another interview with the people behind
4716 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
4717 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
4718 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
4719 details get right before release.
4720
4721 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4722
4723 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
4724 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
4725 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
4726 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
4727 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
4728 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
4729 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
4730 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
4731
4732 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
4733 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
4734 home since 2006.</p>
4735
4736 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4737 project?</strong></p>
4738
4739 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
4740 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
4741 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
4742 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
4743 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
4744 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
4745
4746 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
4747 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
4748 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
4749 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
4750 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
4751 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
4752 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
4753 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
4754 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
4755 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
4756 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
4757 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
4758 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
4759 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
4760 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
4761 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
4762
4763 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4764 Edu?</strong></p>
4765
4766 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
4767 for me as today.</p>
4768
4769 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
4770
4771 <p><ul>
4772
4773 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
4774 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
4775
4776 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
4777 cost.</li>
4778
4779 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
4780 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
4781 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
4782 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
4783 server</li>
4784
4785 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
4786 school.</li>
4787
4788 </ul></p>
4789
4790 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
4791 came up in this way:</p>
4792
4793 <p><ul>
4794
4795 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
4796 now.</li>
4797
4798 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
4799 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
4800 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
4801
4802 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
4803 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
4804 interfaces used in the past.</li>
4805
4806 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4807 different needs.</li>
4808
4809 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
4810
4811 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4812 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4813 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
4814
4815 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4816 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
4817
4818 </ul></p>
4819
4820 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4821 Edu?</strong></p>
4822
4823 <p><ul>
4824
4825 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4826 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
4827 whole municipality areas.</li>
4828
4829 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
4830 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
4831 politicians.</li>
4832
4833 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
4834
4835 </ul></p>
4836
4837 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4838
4839 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
4840 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
4841 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
4842 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
4843 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
4844 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
4845
4846 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
4847 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
4848 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
4849 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
4850 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
4851
4852 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4853 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4854
4855 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
4856 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
4857 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
4858
4859       </div>
4860       <div class="tags">
4861
4862
4863         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4864
4865
4866       </div>
4867     </div>
4868     <div class="padding"></div>
4869
4870     <div class="entry">
4871       <div class="title">
4872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
4873       </div>
4874       <div class="date">
4875         30th April 2012
4876       </div>
4877       <div class="body">
4878         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
4879 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
4880
4881 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
4882 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
4883 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
4884 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
4885 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
4886 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
4887 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
4888 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
4889 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
4890 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
4891 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
4892 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
4893 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
4894 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
4895 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
4896 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
4897
4898 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
4899 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
4900 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
4901 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
4902 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
4903 finally found a Danish supplier
4904 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
4905 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
4906 days ago.</p>
4907
4908 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
4909 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
4910 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
4911 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
4912 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
4913 toys.</p>
4914
4915       </div>
4916       <div class="tags">
4917
4918
4919         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4920
4921
4922       </div>
4923     </div>
4924     <div class="padding"></div>
4925
4926     <div class="entry">
4927       <div class="title">
4928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
4929       </div>
4930       <div class="date">
4931         26th April 2012
4932       </div>
4933       <div class="body">
4934         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
4935 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
4936 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
4937 that the video editor application included with
4938 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
4939 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
4940 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
4941
4942 <p><blockquote>
4943 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
4944 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
4945 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
4946 </blockquote></p>
4947
4948 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
4949
4950 <p><blockquote>
4951 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4952 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
4953 </blockquote></p>
4954
4955 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4956 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
4958 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
4959 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4960 video.  AMR is
4961 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
4962 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
4963 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4964 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
4965 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
4966 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4967 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
4968
4969 <p>I know why I prefer
4970 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
4971 standards</a> also for video.</p>
4972
4973       </div>
4974       <div class="tags">
4975
4976
4977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4978
4979
4980       </div>
4981     </div>
4982     <div class="padding"></div>
4983
4984     <div class="entry">
4985       <div class="title">
4986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
4987       </div>
4988       <div class="date">
4989         19th April 2012
4990       </div>
4991       <div class="body">
4992         <p>Here in Norway, the
4993 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
4994 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
4995 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
4996 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4997 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4998 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4999 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
5000 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
5001 on the same level.</p>
5002
5003 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
5004 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
5005 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
5006 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
5007 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
5008 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
5009 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
5010 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
5011 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
5012 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
5013 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
5014 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
5015 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
5016 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
5017 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
5018 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
5019 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
5020 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
5021
5022 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
5023 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
5024 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
5025 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
5026 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
5027 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
5028 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
5029 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
5030
5031 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
5032 from Simon Phipps
5033 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
5034 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
5035
5036 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
5037 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
5038 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
5039 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
5040 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
5041 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
5042 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
5043 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
5044 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
5045
5046       </div>
5047       <div class="tags">
5048
5049
5050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5051
5052
5053       </div>
5054     </div>
5055     <div class="padding"></div>
5056
5057     <div class="entry">
5058       <div class="title">
5059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
5060       </div>
5061       <div class="date">
5062         15th April 2012
5063       </div>
5064       <div class="body">
5065         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5066 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
5067 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
5068 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
5069 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
5070 up in the recently released
5071 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
5072 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
5073
5074 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5075
5076 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
5077 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
5078 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
5079 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
5080 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
5081 information technology and science/technology.</p>
5082
5083 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5084 project?</strong></p>
5085
5086 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
5087 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
5088 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
5089 contributing.</p>
5090
5091 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5092 Edu?</strong></p>
5093
5094 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
5095 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
5096 Debian Project!</p>
5097
5098 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5099 Edu?</strong></p>
5100
5101 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
5102 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
5103 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
5104 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
5105 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
5106 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
5107 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
5108
5109 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
5110 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
5111
5112 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5113
5114 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
5115 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
5116 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
5117 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
5118
5119 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5120 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5121
5122 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
5123 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
5124 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
5125 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
5126 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
5127 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
5128 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
5129
5130 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
5131 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
5132 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
5133 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
5134 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
5135 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
5136 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
5137 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
5138
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="tags">
5141
5142
5143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5144
5145
5146       </div>
5147     </div>
5148     <div class="padding"></div>
5149
5150     <div class="entry">
5151       <div class="title">
5152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
5153       </div>
5154       <div class="date">
5155          8th April 2012
5156       </div>
5157       <div class="body">
5158         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
5159 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
5160 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
5161 contributor to the
5162 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
5163 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
5164
5165 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5166
5167 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
5168 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
5169
5170 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5171 project?</strong></p>
5172
5173 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
5174 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
5175 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
5176 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
5177 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
5178 "localisation".</p>
5179
5180 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5181 Edu?</strong></p>
5182
5183 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5184 Edu?</strong></p>
5185
5186 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
5187 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
5188 education system.</p>
5189
5190 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
5191 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
5192 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
5193 money on the latest hardware.</p>
5194
5195 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5196
5197 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
5198 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
5199 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
5200
5201 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5202 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5203
5204 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
5205 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
5206 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
5207
5208       </div>
5209       <div class="tags">
5210
5211
5212         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5213
5214
5215       </div>
5216     </div>
5217     <div class="padding"></div>
5218
5219     <div class="entry">
5220       <div class="title">
5221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
5222       </div>
5223       <div class="date">
5224          6th April 2012
5225       </div>
5226       <div class="body">
5227         <p>Recently I have spent time with
5228 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
5229 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5230 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
5231 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
5232 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
5233 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
5234 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
5235 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
5236
5237 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
5238 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
5239 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
5240 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
5241 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
5242 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
5243 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
5244 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
5245
5246 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
5247 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
5248 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
5249 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
5250 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
5251 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
5252 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
5253 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
5254
5255 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
5256 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
5257 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
5258 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
5259 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
5260 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
5261 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
5262 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
5263 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
5264 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
5265
5266 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
5267 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
5268 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
5269 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
5270
5271 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
5272 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
5273
5274       </div>
5275       <div class="tags">
5276
5277
5278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5279
5280
5281       </div>
5282     </div>
5283     <div class="padding"></div>
5284
5285     <div class="entry">
5286       <div class="title">
5287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
5288       </div>
5289       <div class="date">
5290          5th April 2012
5291       </div>
5292       <div class="body">
5293         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
5294 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
5295 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
5296 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
5297 for schools.  Check out his article
5298 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
5299 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
5300
5301       </div>
5302       <div class="tags">
5303
5304
5305         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5306
5307
5308       </div>
5309     </div>
5310     <div class="padding"></div>
5311
5312     <div class="entry">
5313       <div class="title">
5314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
5315       </div>
5316       <div class="date">
5317          1st April 2012
5318       </div>
5319       <div class="body">
5320         <p>Germany is a core area for the
5321 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5322 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
5323 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
5324
5325 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5326
5327 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
5328 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
5329 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
5330 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
5331 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
5332 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
5333 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
5334 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
5335
5336 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
5337 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
5338 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
5339 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
5340 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
5341 the end of April this year.</p>
5342
5343 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5344 project?</strong></p>
5345
5346 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
5347 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
5348 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
5349 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
5350 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
5351 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
5352 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
5353 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
5354 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
5355 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
5356 Skolelinux.</p>
5357
5358 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
5359 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
5360 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
5361 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
5362 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
5363 the admin teachers.</p>
5364
5365 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5366 Edu?</strong></p>
5367
5368 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
5369 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
5370 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
5371
5372 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
5373 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
5374 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
5375 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
5376 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
5377
5378 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5379 Edu?</strong></p>
5380
5381 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
5382
5383 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5384
5385 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
5386 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
5387 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
5388 LibreOffice.</p>
5389
5390 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5391 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5392
5393 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
5394 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
5395 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
5396
5397       </div>
5398       <div class="tags">
5399
5400
5401         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5402
5403
5404       </div>
5405     </div>
5406     <div class="padding"></div>
5407
5408     <div class="entry">
5409       <div class="title">
5410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
5411       </div>
5412       <div class="date">
5413         25th March 2012
5414       </div>
5415       <div class="body">
5416         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5417
5418 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
5419 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
5420 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
5421 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
5422 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
5423 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
5424 and download as a
5425 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
5426 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
5427
5428 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
5429   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
5430     <p>Download video as
5431       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
5432 </video></p>
5433
5434       </div>
5435       <div class="tags">
5436
5437
5438         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5439
5440
5441       </div>
5442     </div>
5443     <div class="padding"></div>
5444
5445     <div class="entry">
5446       <div class="title">
5447         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
5448       </div>
5449       <div class="date">
5450         19th March 2012
5451       </div>
5452       <div class="body">
5453         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5454 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
5455 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5456 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
5457 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
5458
5459 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5460
5461 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
5462 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
5463 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
5464 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
5465 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
5466 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
5467 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
5468 installations.</p>
5469
5470 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5471 project?</strong></p>
5472
5473 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
5474 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
5475 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
5476 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
5477 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
5478 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
5479 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
5480 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
5481 these things we decided to try it.</p>
5482
5483 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5484 Edu?</strong></p>
5485
5486 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
5487 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
5488 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
5489 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
5490 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
5491 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
5492 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
5493 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
5494
5495 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5496 Edu?</strong></p>
5497
5498 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
5499 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
5500 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
5501 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
5502 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
5503
5504 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5505
5506 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
5507 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
5508 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
5509 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
5510 that counts...)</p>
5511
5512 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5513 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5514
5515 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
5516 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
5517 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
5518 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
5519 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
5520 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
5521 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
5522 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
5523 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
5524 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
5525 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
5526
5527 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
5528 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
5529 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
5530
5531       </div>
5532       <div class="tags">
5533
5534
5535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5536
5537
5538       </div>
5539     </div>
5540     <div class="padding"></div>
5541
5542     <div class="entry">
5543       <div class="title">
5544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
5545       </div>
5546       <div class="date">
5547         16th March 2012
5548       </div>
5549       <div class="body">
5550         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
5551 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
5552 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
5553 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
5554
5555 <ol>
5556
5557 <li>The documentation is written in a
5558 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
5559 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
5560 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
5561 docbook XML.</li>
5562
5563 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
5564 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
5565 with the translated text.</li>
5566
5567 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
5568 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
5569 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
5570 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
5571 images.</li>
5572
5573 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
5574 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
5575
5576 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
5577 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
5578
5579 </ol>
5580
5581 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
5582 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
5583 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
5584 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
5585 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
5586
5587 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
5588 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
5589 package</a>.</p>
5590
5591       </div>
5592       <div class="tags">
5593
5594
5595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5596
5597
5598       </div>
5599     </div>
5600     <div class="padding"></div>
5601
5602     <div class="entry">
5603       <div class="title">
5604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
5605       </div>
5606       <div class="date">
5607         11th March 2012
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="body">
5610         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
5611 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
5612 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5613 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
5614 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
5615 you have not done so already.</p>
5616
5617 <p>I plan to present the new version at
5618 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
5619 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
5620 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
5621
5622       </div>
5623       <div class="tags">
5624
5625
5626         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5627
5628
5629       </div>
5630     </div>
5631     <div class="padding"></div>
5632
5633     <div class="entry">
5634       <div class="title">
5635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
5636       </div>
5637       <div class="date">
5638          9th March 2012
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="body">
5641         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
5642 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
5643 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5644 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
5645 more international audience.</p>
5646
5647 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5648 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
5649 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
5650 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
5651 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
5652 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
5653 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
5654
5655
5656 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5657
5658 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
5659 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
5660 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
5661 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
5662 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
5663 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
5664 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
5665 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
5666 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
5667 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
5668 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
5669
5670 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5671 project?</strong></p>
5672
5673 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
5674 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
5675 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
5676 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
5677 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
5678 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
5679 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
5680 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
5681 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
5682 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
5683 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
5684 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
5685 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
5686
5687 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5688 Edu?</strong></p>
5689
5690 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
5691 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
5692 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
5693 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
5694 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
5695 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
5696 Japan.</p>
5697
5698 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5699 Edu?</strong></p>
5700
5701 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
5702 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
5703 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
5704 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
5705 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
5706 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
5707 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
5708 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
5709 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
5710 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
5711 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
5712 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
5713 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
5714 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
5715 help.</p>
5716
5717 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5718
5719 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
5720 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
5721 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
5722 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
5723 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
5724 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
5725 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
5726 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
5727 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
5728 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
5729 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
5730
5731 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5732 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5733
5734 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
5735 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
5736 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
5737 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
5738 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
5739 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
5740 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
5741 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
5742 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
5743 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
5744 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
5745 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
5746
5747       </div>
5748       <div class="tags">
5749
5750
5751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5752
5753
5754       </div>
5755     </div>
5756     <div class="padding"></div>
5757
5758     <div class="entry">
5759       <div class="title">
5760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
5761       </div>
5762       <div class="date">
5763          7th March 2012
5764       </div>
5765       <div class="body">
5766         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5767
5768 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
5769 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
5770 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
5771 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
5772 download as a
5773 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
5774 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
5775
5776 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
5777   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
5778     <p>Download video as
5779       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
5780 </video></p>
5781
5782       </div>
5783       <div class="tags">
5784
5785
5786         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5787
5788
5789       </div>
5790     </div>
5791     <div class="padding"></div>
5792
5793     <div class="entry">
5794       <div class="title">
5795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5796       </div>
5797       <div class="date">
5798          4th March 2012
5799       </div>
5800       <div class="body">
5801         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
5802 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5803 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5804 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
5805 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
5806 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5807
5808       </div>
5809       <div class="tags">
5810
5811
5812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5813
5814
5815       </div>
5816     </div>
5817     <div class="padding"></div>
5818
5819     <div class="entry">
5820       <div class="title">
5821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
5822       </div>
5823       <div class="date">
5824          3rd March 2012
5825       </div>
5826       <div class="body">
5827         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5828 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
5829 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
5830 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
5831 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
5832 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
5833 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
5834 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
5835 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
5836 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
5837 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
5838 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
5839 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
5840 year...</p>
5841
5842 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
5843 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
5844 name,
5845 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
5846 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
5847 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
5848 mean). I've been following
5849 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
5850 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
5851 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
5852 Check it out. :)</p>
5853
5854       </div>
5855       <div class="tags">
5856
5857
5858         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5859
5860
5861       </div>
5862     </div>
5863     <div class="padding"></div>
5864
5865     <div class="entry">
5866       <div class="title">
5867         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5868       </div>
5869       <div class="date">
5870         27th February 2012
5871       </div>
5872       <div class="body">
5873         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
5874 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5875 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
5876 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
5877 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
5878 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
5879 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5880
5881       </div>
5882       <div class="tags">
5883
5884
5885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5886
5887
5888       </div>
5889     </div>
5890     <div class="padding"></div>
5891
5892     <div class="entry">
5893       <div class="title">
5894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5895       </div>
5896       <div class="date">
5897         19th February 2012
5898       </div>
5899       <div class="body">
5900         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
5901 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
5902 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5903 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5904 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
5905 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
5906 solution for your school.</p>
5907
5908       </div>
5909       <div class="tags">
5910
5911
5912         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5913
5914
5915       </div>
5916     </div>
5917     <div class="padding"></div>
5918
5919     <div class="entry">
5920       <div class="title">
5921         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
5922       </div>
5923       <div class="date">
5924         14th February 2012
5925       </div>
5926       <div class="body">
5927         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
5928 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
5929 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
5930 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
5931 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
5932 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
5933 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
5934 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
5935 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
5936
5937 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
5938 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
5939 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
5940 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
5941 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
5942
5943 <blockquote><pre>
5944 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
5945 do
5946     printf "Failed disk $d: "
5947     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
5948 done
5949 </blockquote></pre>
5950
5951 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5952 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
5953
5954 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
5955
5956 <blockquote><pre>
5957 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5958 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5959 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
5960 </blockquote></pre>
5961
5962 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5963 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5964 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5965 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
5966 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5967 mounted inside my box.</p>
5968
5969 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5970 Software RAID in the
5971 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
5972 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5973 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
5974 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5975 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5976 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
5977
5978       </div>
5979       <div class="tags">
5980
5981
5982         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
5983
5984
5985       </div>
5986     </div>
5987     <div class="padding"></div>
5988
5989     <div class="entry">
5990       <div class="title">
5991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5992       </div>
5993       <div class="date">
5994         13th February 2012
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="body">
5997         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
5998 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
5999 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
6000 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
6001 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
6002 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
6003 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
6004 change the global proxy setting by editing
6005 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
6006 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
6007
6008 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
6009 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
6010 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
6011
6012 <blockquote><pre>
6013 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
6014 {
6015    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
6016        isPlainHostName(host) ||
6017        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
6018       return "DIRECT";
6019    else
6020       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
6021 }
6022 </pre></blockquote>
6023
6024 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
6025
6026 <blockquote><pre>
6027 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
6028 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
6029 </pre></blockquote>
6030
6031 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
6032 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
6033 would be used for
6034 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
6035 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
6036 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
6037 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
6038 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
6039 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
6040 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
6041 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
6042 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
6043 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
6044
6045 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
6046 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
6047 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
6048 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
6049 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
6050 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
6051
6052 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
6053 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
6054 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
6055 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
6056 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
6057 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
6058 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
6059 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
6060 the network setup changes.</p>
6061
6062 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
6063 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
6064 draft</a> and a
6065 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
6066 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
6067
6068       </div>
6069       <div class="tags">
6070
6071
6072         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6073
6074
6075       </div>
6076     </div>
6077     <div class="padding"></div>
6078
6079     <div class="entry">
6080       <div class="title">
6081         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
6082       </div>
6083       <div class="date">
6084          5th February 2012
6085       </div>
6086       <div class="body">
6087         <p>Since the Lenny version of
6088 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
6089 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
6090 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
6091 in the morning.  This is done using the
6092 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
6093
6094 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
6095 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
6096 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
6097 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
6098 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
6099 the
6100 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
6101 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
6102 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
6103 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
6104 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
6105
6106 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
6107 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
6108 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
6109 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
6110 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
6111 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
6112 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
6113
6114 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
6115 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
6116 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
6117 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
6118 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
6119
6120       </div>
6121       <div class="tags">
6122
6123
6124         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6125
6126
6127       </div>
6128     </div>
6129     <div class="padding"></div>
6130
6131     <div class="entry">
6132       <div class="title">
6133         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
6134       </div>
6135       <div class="date">
6136          4th February 2012
6137       </div>
6138       <div class="body">
6139         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
6140 publish the third beta version of
6141 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6142 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
6143 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
6144 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
6145 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
6146 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
6147 on the project announcement list.</p>
6148
6149 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
6150 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
6151
6152 <ul>
6153
6154 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
6155   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
6156   the installation.</li>
6157
6158 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
6159   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
6160
6161 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
6162   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
6163   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
6164
6165 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
6166   for the local system administrator is created during installation
6167   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
6168   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
6169   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
6170   up to date on the system.</li>
6171
6172 </ul>
6173
6174 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
6175 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
6176 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
6177 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
6178
6179 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
6180 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
6181 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
6182 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
6183 will see you there?</p>
6184
6185       </div>
6186       <div class="tags">
6187
6188
6189         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6190
6191
6192       </div>
6193     </div>
6194     <div class="padding"></div>
6195
6196     <div class="entry">
6197       <div class="title">
6198         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
6199       </div>
6200       <div class="date">
6201         27th January 2012
6202       </div>
6203       <div class="body">
6204         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
6205 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
6206 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6207 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
6208 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
6209 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
6210 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
6211
6212 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
6213 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
6214 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
6215 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
6216 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
6217 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
6218 not taken care of by this.</p>
6219
6220 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
6221 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
6222 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
6223 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
6224 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
6225 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
6226 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
6227 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
6228 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
6229 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
6230 firmware packages.</p>
6231
6232 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
6233 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
6234 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
6235 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
6236 initrd with extra firmware, the
6237 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
6238 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
6239 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
6240
6241 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
6242 network cards working.  For this,
6243 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
6244 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
6245 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
6246
6247 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
6248 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
6249 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
6250
6251 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
6252 try.</p>
6253
6254       </div>
6255       <div class="tags">
6256
6257
6258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6259
6260
6261       </div>
6262     </div>
6263     <div class="padding"></div>
6264
6265     <div class="entry">
6266       <div class="title">
6267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
6268       </div>
6269       <div class="date">
6270         25th January 2012
6271       </div>
6272       <div class="body">
6273         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
6274 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
6275 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
6276 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
6277 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
6278
6279 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
6280 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
6281 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
6282 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
6283 this is done, log on to the central server and run
6284 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
6285 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
6286 will look similar to this:</p>
6287
6288 <p><blockquote><pre>
6289 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
6290 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
6291 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
6292
6293 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
6294
6295 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6296 enter password: *******
6297 %
6298 </pre></blockquote></p>
6299
6300 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
6301 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
6302 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
6303 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
6304 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
6305 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
6306 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
6307 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
6308 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
6309 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
6310 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
6311 automatically.</p>
6312
6313 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
6314 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
6315
6316 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
6317 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
6318 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
6319
6320       </div>
6321       <div class="tags">
6322
6323
6324         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
6325
6326
6327       </div>
6328     </div>
6329     <div class="padding"></div>
6330
6331     <div class="entry">
6332       <div class="title">
6333         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
6334       </div>
6335       <div class="date">
6336         10th January 2012
6337       </div>
6338       <div class="body">
6339         <p>In the Squeeze version of
6340 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
6341 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
6342 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
6343 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
6344 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
6345 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
6346 first time.</p>
6347
6348 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
6349 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
6350 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
6351 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
6352
6353 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
6354 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
6355 new setting.</p>
6356
6357 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
6358 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
6359 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
6360
6361       </div>
6362       <div class="tags">
6363
6364
6365         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6366
6367
6368       </div>
6369     </div>
6370     <div class="padding"></div>
6371
6372     <div class="entry">
6373       <div class="title">
6374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
6375       </div>
6376       <div class="date">
6377          7th January 2012
6378       </div>
6379       <div class="body">
6380         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
6381 the second beta version of
6382 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
6383 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
6384 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
6385 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
6386 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
6387 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
6388 on the project announcement list.</p>
6389
6390       </div>
6391       <div class="tags">
6392
6393
6394         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6395
6396
6397       </div>
6398     </div>
6399     <div class="padding"></div>
6400
6401     <div class="entry">
6402       <div class="title">
6403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
6404       </div>
6405       <div class="date">
6406          3rd January 2012
6407       </div>
6408       <div class="body">
6409         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
6410 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
6411 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
6412 interesting.</p>
6413
6414 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
6415 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
6416 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
6417 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
6418 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
6419 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
6420 wrap up its tasks.</p>
6421
6422 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
6423 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
6424 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
6425 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
6426 because I was typing.</P>
6427
6428 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
6429 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
6430 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
6431 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
6432 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
6433 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
6434 generate entropy.</p>
6435
6436 <p>The fix is in
6437 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
6438 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
6439 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
6440 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
6441
6442       </div>
6443       <div class="tags">
6444
6445
6446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6447
6448
6449       </div>
6450     </div>
6451     <div class="padding"></div>
6452
6453     <div class="entry">
6454       <div class="title">
6455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
6456       </div>
6457       <div class="date">
6458         21st November 2011
6459       </div>
6460       <div class="body">
6461         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
6462 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
6463 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
6464 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
6465 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
6466 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
6467 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
6468 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
6469 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
6470 the tools to do so.</p>
6471
6472 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
6473 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
6474 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
6475 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
6476
6477 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
6478 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
6479 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
6480 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
6481 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
6482 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
6483 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
6484 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
6485
6486 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
6487 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
6488 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
6489
6490 <p><pre>
6491 #!/usr/bin/perl
6492 use strict;
6493 use warnings;
6494 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6495 BEGIN {
6496     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6497     my %rhelmodules = (
6498         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
6499         );
6500     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6501         eval "use $module;";
6502         if ($@) {
6503             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6504             system("yum install -y $pkg");
6505             eval "use $module;";
6506         }
6507     }
6508 }
6509 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
6510
6511 upgrade_dell();
6512
6513 exit 0;
6514
6515 sub run_firmware_script {
6516     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6517     unless ($script) {
6518         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
6519         exit 1
6520     }
6521     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
6522
6523     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6524         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
6525     } else {
6526         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
6527     }
6528 }
6529
6530 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6531     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6532     # Run firmware packages
6533     for my $dir (@dirs) {
6534         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
6535         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
6536         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6537             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6538             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
6539         }
6540         closedir $dh;
6541     }
6542 }
6543
6544 sub download {
6545     my $url = shift;
6546     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
6547     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
6548 }
6549
6550 sub upgrade_dell {
6551     my @dirs;
6552     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6553     chomp $product;
6554
6555     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6556
6557         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6558         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
6559
6560         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6561             CLEANUP => 1
6562             );
6563         chdir($tmpdir);
6564         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
6565         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
6566         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
6567         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6568         my $fwopts = "-q";
6569         if (@paths) {
6570             for my $url (@paths) {
6571                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6572             }
6573             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6574         } else {
6575             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6576             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6577         }
6578         chdir('/');
6579     } else {
6580         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6581         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6582     }
6583 }
6584
6585 sub fetch_dell_fw {
6586     my $path = shift;
6587     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
6588     download($url);
6589 }
6590
6591 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6592 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
6593 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
6594 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6595     my $filename = shift;
6596
6597     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6598     chomp $product;
6599     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6600
6601     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6602
6603     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6604     my @paths;
6605     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6606         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
6607         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
6608         my $oscode;
6609         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
6610             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
6611         } else {
6612             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
6613         }
6614         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6615         {
6616             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
6617         }
6618     }
6619     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6620         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
6621
6622         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6623         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6624
6625         my $cpath = $component->{path};
6626         for my $path (@paths) {
6627             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6628                 push(@paths, $cpath);
6629             }
6630         }
6631     }
6632     return @paths;
6633 }
6634 </pre>
6635
6636 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6637 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
6638 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
6639 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6640 outdated.</p>
6641
6642       </div>
6643       <div class="tags">
6644
6645
6646         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>.
6647
6648
6649       </div>
6650     </div>
6651     <div class="padding"></div>
6652
6653     <div class="entry">
6654       <div class="title">
6655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
6656       </div>
6657       <div class="date">
6658          7th October 2011
6659       </div>
6660       <div class="body">
6661         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
6662 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
6663 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
6664 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
6665 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
6666 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
6667 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
6668 models.</p>
6669
6670 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
6671 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
6672 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
6673 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
6674
6675 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
6676 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
6677 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
6678 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
6679 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
6680 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
6681 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
6682 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
6683 distributed.</p>
6684
6685 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
6686
6687 <ul>
6688
6689 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
6690   other relevant equipment.</li>
6691
6692 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
6693
6694 </ul>
6695
6696 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
6697 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
6698 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
6699 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
6700 books available.</p>
6701
6702 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
6703 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
6704 libraries. :)</p>
6705
6706       </div>
6707       <div class="tags">
6708
6709
6710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6711
6712
6713       </div>
6714     </div>
6715     <div class="padding"></div>
6716
6717     <div class="entry">
6718       <div class="title">
6719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
6720       </div>
6721       <div class="date">
6722         17th September 2011
6723       </div>
6724       <div class="body">
6725         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
6726 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
6727 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
6728 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
6729 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
6730 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
6731 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
6732 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
6733
6734 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
6735
6736 <blockquote><pre>
6737 #!/bin/sh
6738 # apt-get install lsdvd
6739 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
6740 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
6741 </pre></blockquote>
6742
6743 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
6744 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
6745 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
6746 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
6747
6748 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
6749 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
6750 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
6751 back as an ISO.
6752
6753 <blockquote><pre>
6754 #!/bin/sh
6755 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
6756 set -e
6757 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
6758 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
6759 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
6760 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
6761 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
6762 </pre></blockquote>
6763
6764 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
6765
6766 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
6767 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
6768 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
6769 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
6770 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
6771
6772 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
6773 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
6774 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
6775 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
6776 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
6777 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
6778
6779       </div>
6780       <div class="tags">
6781
6782
6783         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6784
6785
6786       </div>
6787     </div>
6788     <div class="padding"></div>
6789
6790     <div class="entry">
6791       <div class="title">
6792         <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>
6793       </div>
6794       <div class="date">
6795          4th August 2011
6796       </div>
6797       <div class="body">
6798         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6799 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6800 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6801 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6802 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6803 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6804 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6805 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6806 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6807
6808 <p><blockquote>
6809 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6810 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6811 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6812 </blockquote></p>
6813
6814 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6815 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6816 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6817 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6818 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6819 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6820 hard to explain.</p>
6821
6822 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6823 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6824 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6825 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6826 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6827 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6828 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6829 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6830 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6831 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6832 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6833 mode).</p>
6834
6835 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6836 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6837 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6838 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6839 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6840 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6841 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6842 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6843 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6844
6845 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6846 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6847 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6848 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6849 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6850 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6851 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6852 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6853
6854 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6855 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6856 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6857
6858       </div>
6859       <div class="tags">
6860
6861
6862         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>.
6863
6864
6865       </div>
6866     </div>
6867     <div class="padding"></div>
6868
6869     <div class="entry">
6870       <div class="title">
6871         <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>
6872       </div>
6873       <div class="date">
6874         30th July 2011
6875       </div>
6876       <div class="body">
6877         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6878 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6879 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6880 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6881 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6882 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6883 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6884 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6885 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6886 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6887 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6888 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6889 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6890
6891 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6892 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6893 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6894 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6895 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6896 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6897 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6898 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6899 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6900
6901 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6902 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6903 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6904 is presented.</p>
6905
6906 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6907 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6908 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6909 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6910 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6911 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6912 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6913 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6914 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6915 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6916 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6917 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6918 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6919 find time to push this forward.</p>
6920
6921       </div>
6922       <div class="tags">
6923
6924
6925         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>.
6926
6927
6928       </div>
6929     </div>
6930     <div class="padding"></div>
6931
6932     <div class="entry">
6933       <div class="title">
6934         <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>
6935       </div>
6936       <div class="date">
6937         29th July 2011
6938       </div>
6939       <div class="body">
6940         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6941 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6942 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6943 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6944 issues.</p>
6945
6946 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6947 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6948 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6949
6950 <ol>
6951
6952 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6953 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6954 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6955 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6956 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6957 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6958 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6959 Debian.</li>
6960
6961 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6962 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6963 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6964 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6965 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6966 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6967 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6968 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6969 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6970 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6971 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6972 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6973 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6974
6975 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6976 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6977 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6978 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6979 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6980 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6981 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6982 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6983 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6984 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6985
6986 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6987 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6988 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6989 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6990 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6991 latter behaviour.</li>
6992
6993 </ol>
6994
6995 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6996 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6997 it do not matter much.</p>
6998
6999 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
7000 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
7001 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
7002
7003       </div>
7004       <div class="tags">
7005
7006
7007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7008
7009
7010       </div>
7011     </div>
7012     <div class="padding"></div>
7013
7014     <div class="entry">
7015       <div class="title">
7016         <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>
7017       </div>
7018       <div class="date">
7019         26th July 2011
7020       </div>
7021       <div class="body">
7022         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
7023 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
7024 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
7025 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
7026 security support for a few years.</p>
7027
7028 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
7029 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
7030 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
7031 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
7032 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
7033 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
7034 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
7035 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
7036 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
7037 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
7038 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
7039 easier in the future.</p>
7040
7041 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
7042 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
7043 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
7044 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
7045 do not have time for.</p>
7046
7047       </div>
7048       <div class="tags">
7049
7050
7051         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>.
7052
7053
7054       </div>
7055     </div>
7056     <div class="padding"></div>
7057
7058     <div class="entry">
7059       <div class="title">
7060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
7061       </div>
7062       <div class="date">
7063         20th June 2011
7064       </div>
7065       <div class="body">
7066         <p>Reading
7067 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
7068 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
7069 parts of the
7070 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
7071 and
7072 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
7073 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
7074 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
7075 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
7076
7077       </div>
7078       <div class="tags">
7079
7080
7081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7082
7083
7084       </div>
7085     </div>
7086     <div class="padding"></div>
7087
7088     <div class="entry">
7089       <div class="title">
7090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
7091       </div>
7092       <div class="date">
7093         30th April 2011
7094       </div>
7095       <div class="body">
7096         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
7097 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
7098 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
7099 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
7100 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
7101 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
7102 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
7103 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
7104 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
7105 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
7106
7107 <p>Where is it?  Visit
7108 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
7109 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
7110 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7111 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
7112
7113       </div>
7114       <div class="tags">
7115
7116
7117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
7118
7119
7120       </div>
7121     </div>
7122     <div class="padding"></div>
7123
7124     <div class="entry">
7125       <div class="title">
7126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
7127       </div>
7128       <div class="date">
7129         29th April 2011
7130       </div>
7131       <div class="body">
7132         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
7133 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
7134 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
7135 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
7136 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
7137 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
7138 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
7139 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
7140 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
7141 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
7142 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
7143 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
7144 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
7145
7146 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
7147 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
7148 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
7149 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
7150 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
7151 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
7152 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
7153 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
7154 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
7155 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
7156 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
7157 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
7158 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
7159
7160 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
7161 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
7162 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
7163 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
7164 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
7165 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
7166 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
7167 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
7168 it.</p>
7169
7170 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
7171 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
7172 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
7173 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
7174 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
7175 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
7176 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
7177
7178 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
7179 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
7180 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
7181 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
7182 and range= options.</p>
7183
7184 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
7185 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
7186 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
7187 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
7188 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
7189 to best handle this.  I've noticed
7190 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
7191 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
7192 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
7193 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
7194
7195 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
7196 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
7197 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
7198 discussions instead of only
7199 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
7200 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
7201 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
7202 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
7203 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
7204 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
7205
7206       </div>
7207       <div class="tags">
7208
7209
7210         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
7211
7212
7213       </div>
7214     </div>
7215     <div class="padding"></div>
7216
7217     <div class="entry">
7218       <div class="title">
7219         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
7220       </div>
7221       <div class="date">
7222          6th April 2011
7223       </div>
7224       <div class="body">
7225         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
7226 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
7227 A few days ago the project
7228 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
7229 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
7230 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
7231 into Gnash.</p>
7232
7233       </div>
7234       <div class="tags">
7235
7236
7237         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7238
7239
7240       </div>
7241     </div>
7242     <div class="padding"></div>
7243
7244     <div class="entry">
7245       <div class="title">
7246         <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>
7247       </div>
7248       <div class="date">
7249          3rd April 2011
7250       </div>
7251       <div class="body">
7252         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
7253 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
7254 update in English.</p>
7255
7256 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
7257 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
7258 of the British service
7259 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
7260 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
7261 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7262 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
7263 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7264 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
7265 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7266 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7267 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
7268 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7269 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7270 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7271 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7272
7273 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7274 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
7275 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7276 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
7277 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7278 public infrastructure.</p>
7279
7280 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7281 such service?</p>
7282
7283       </div>
7284       <div class="tags">
7285
7286
7287         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
7288
7289
7290       </div>
7291     </div>
7292     <div class="padding"></div>
7293
7294     <div class="entry">
7295       <div class="title">
7296         <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>
7297       </div>
7298       <div class="date">
7299         28th January 2011
7300       </div>
7301       <div class="body">
7302         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
7303 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
7304 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
7305 available on the Internet, and check our locally
7306 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
7307 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
7308 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
7309 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
7310 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
7311 out which security holes were present in our free software
7312 collection.</p>
7313
7314 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
7315 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
7316 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
7317 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
7318 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
7319 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
7320 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
7321 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
7322 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
7323 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
7324 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
7325 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
7326 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
7327 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
7328 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
7329 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
7330
7331 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
7332 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
7333 check out, one could look up
7334 <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
7335 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
7336 The most recent one is
7337 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
7338 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
7339 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
7340
7341 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
7342 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
7343 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
7344 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
7345 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
7346 security issues out.</p>
7347
7348 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
7349 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
7350 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
7351 RHEL is providing
7352 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
7353 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
7354 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
7355
7356 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
7357 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
7358 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
7359 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
7360 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
7361 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
7362 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
7363 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
7364 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
7365 established soon.</p>
7366
7367 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
7368 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
7369 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
7370 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
7371 for their packages.</p>
7372
7373       </div>
7374       <div class="tags">
7375
7376
7377         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>.
7378
7379
7380       </div>
7381     </div>
7382     <div class="padding"></div>
7383
7384     <div class="entry">
7385       <div class="title">
7386         <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>
7387       </div>
7388       <div class="date">
7389         23rd January 2011
7390       </div>
7391       <div class="body">
7392         <p>In the
7393 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
7394 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
7395 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
7396 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
7397 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
7398 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
7399 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
7400 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
7401 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
7402 one of my machines like this:</p>
7403
7404 <pre>
7405 loaded modules:
7406 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
7407 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
7408 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
7409 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
7410 10de:03ec pata_amd
7411 10de:03f6 sata_nv
7412 1022:1103 k8temp
7413 109e:036e bttv
7414 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
7415 11ab:4364 sky2
7416 </pre>
7417
7418 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
7419 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
7420
7421 <pre>
7422 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
7423     echo loaded pci modules:
7424     (
7425         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
7426         for address in * ; do
7427             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7428                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7429                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7430                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
7431                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
7432                     echo "$id $module"
7433                 fi
7434             fi
7435         done
7436     )
7437     echo
7438 fi
7439 </pre>
7440
7441 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
7442 mappings:</p>
7443
7444 <pre>
7445 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
7446     echo loaded usb modules:
7447     (
7448         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
7449         for address in * ; do
7450             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7451                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7452                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7453                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
7454                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
7455                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
7456                         echo "$id $module"
7457                     fi
7458                 fi
7459             fi
7460         done
7461     )
7462     echo
7463 fi
7464 </pre>
7465
7466 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
7467 well.</p>
7468
7469       </div>
7470       <div class="tags">
7471
7472
7473         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>.
7474
7475
7476       </div>
7477     </div>
7478     <div class="padding"></div>
7479
7480     <div class="entry">
7481       <div class="title">
7482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
7483       </div>
7484       <div class="date">
7485         16th January 2011
7486       </div>
7487       <div class="body">
7488         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
7489 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
7490 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
7491 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
7492 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
7493 the Wikipedia article on
7494 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
7495 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
7496 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
7497 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
7498 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
7499 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
7500 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
7501 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
7502 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
7503 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
7504 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
7505 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
7506
7507 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
7508 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
7509 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
7510 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
7511 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
7512 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
7513 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
7514 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
7515 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
7516 from last week</a>.</p>
7517
7518 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
7519 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
7520 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
7521 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
7522 was without royalties and license terms, check out
7523 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
7524 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
7525
7526 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
7527 available from
7528 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
7529 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
7530 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
7531
7532 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
7533 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
7534 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
7535 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
7536
7537       </div>
7538       <div class="tags">
7539
7540
7541         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7542
7543
7544       </div>
7545     </div>
7546     <div class="padding"></div>
7547
7548     <div class="entry">
7549       <div class="title">
7550         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
7551       </div>
7552       <div class="date">
7553         12th January 2011
7554       </div>
7555       <div class="body">
7556         <p>Today I discovered
7557 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
7558 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
7559 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
7560 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
7561 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
7562 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
7563 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
7564 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
7565 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
7566 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
7567 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
7568 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
7569 on the Google announcement is available from
7570 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
7571 A good read. :)</p>
7572
7573 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
7574 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
7575 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
7576 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
7577 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
7578 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
7579 browsers support H.264, and others support
7580 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
7581 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
7582 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
7583 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
7584 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
7585 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
7586 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
7587 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
7588
7589 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
7590 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
7591 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
7592 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
7593 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
7594 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
7595 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
7596
7597 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
7598 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
7599 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
7600 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
7601 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
7602 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
7603 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
7604
7605 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
7606 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
7607 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
7608 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
7609 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
7610 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
7611 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
7612
7613 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
7614 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
7615 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
7616 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
7617 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
7618 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
7619 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
7620 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
7621 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
7622 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
7623 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
7624 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
7625 I guess time will tell.</p>
7626
7627 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
7628 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
7629 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
7630
7631       </div>
7632       <div class="tags">
7633
7634
7635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7636
7637
7638       </div>
7639     </div>
7640     <div class="padding"></div>
7641
7642     <div class="entry">
7643       <div class="title">
7644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
7645       </div>
7646       <div class="date">
7647         30th December 2010
7648       </div>
7649       <div class="body">
7650         <p>After trying to
7651 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
7652 Ogg Theora</a> to
7653 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
7654 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
7655 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
7656 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
7657 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
7658 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
7659 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
7660
7661 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
7662 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
7663 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
7664 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
7665 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
7666 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
7667 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
7668
7669 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
7670 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
7671
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="tags">
7674
7675
7676         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7677
7678
7679       </div>
7680     </div>
7681     <div class="padding"></div>
7682
7683     <div class="entry">
7684       <div class="title">
7685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
7686       </div>
7687       <div class="date">
7688         27th December 2010
7689       </div>
7690       <div class="body">
7691         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
7692 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
7693 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
7694 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
7695 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
7696 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
7697 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
7698 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
7699
7700 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
7701 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
7702 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
7703 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
7704 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
7705 page</a>.</p>
7706
7707 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
7708 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
7709 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
7710 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
7711 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
7712 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
7713 specification on equal terms.</p>
7714
7715 <blockquote>
7716
7717 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
7718 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
7719 open standard:</p>
7720
7721 <ul>
7722
7723 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7724 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7725 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
7726 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
7727
7728 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7729 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
7730 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
7731 nominal fee.</li>
7732
7733 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
7734 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
7735 free basis.</li>
7736
7737 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
7738
7739 </ul>
7740 </blockquote>
7741
7742 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
7743 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
7744 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
7745 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
7746 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
7747 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
7748 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
7749
7750 <blockquote>
7751
7752 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
7753
7754 <ol>
7755
7756 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
7757 tilgængelig.</li>
7758
7759 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
7760 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
7761
7762 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
7763 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
7764
7765 </ol>
7766
7767 </blockquote>
7768
7769 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
7770 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
7771
7772 <blockquote>
7773
7774 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
7775
7776 <ol>
7777
7778 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
7779 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
7780
7781 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
7782 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
7783 Standard themselves;</li>
7784
7785 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
7786 any party or in any business model;</li>
7787
7788 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
7789 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
7790 parties;</li>
7791
7792 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
7793 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
7794 parties.</li>
7795
7796 </ol>
7797
7798 </blockquote>
7799
7800 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
7801 its
7802 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
7803 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
7804
7805 <blockquote>
7806 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
7807
7808 <ul>
7809
7810 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
7811   democratic:
7812
7813          <ul>
7814
7815          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
7816             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
7817             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
7818             and managed.</li>
7819
7820          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
7821             method, can be changed through input from all
7822             participants.</li>
7823
7824          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
7825             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
7826
7827          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
7828             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
7829
7830          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
7831             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
7832             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
7833
7834          </ul>
7835
7836 </li>
7837
7838 </ul>
7839
7840 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
7841 <ul>
7842
7843 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
7844   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
7845   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
7846   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
7847   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
7848
7849 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
7850   a technical or economic barriers</li>
7851
7852 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
7853   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
7854   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
7855   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
7856   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
7857   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
7858   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
7859   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
7860   intended to function.</li>
7861
7862 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
7863   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
7864   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
7865
7866 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
7867   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
7868   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
7869   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
7870   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
7871   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
7872   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
7873   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
7874
7875       <ul>
7876
7877       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
7878         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
7879         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
7880
7881       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
7882         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
7883         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
7884         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
7885
7886       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
7887         licensor</li>
7888
7889       </ul>
7890 </li>
7891
7892 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
7893   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
7894   or restricted licensing terms</li>
7895
7896 </ul>
7897
7898 </blockquote>
7899
7900 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
7901 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
7902 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
7903 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
7904 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
7905 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
7906 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
7907 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
7908 Standards.</p>
7909
7910       </div>
7911       <div class="tags">
7912
7913
7914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7915
7916
7917       </div>
7918     </div>
7919     <div class="padding"></div>
7920
7921     <div class="entry">
7922       <div class="title">
7923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="date">
7926         25th December 2010
7927       </div>
7928       <div class="body">
7929         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
7930 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
7931
7932 <blockquote>
7933
7934 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
7935 as follows:</p>
7936
7937 <ol>
7938
7939 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
7940 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
7941 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
7942
7943 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7944 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7945 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
7946 parties.</li>
7947
7948 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7949 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
7950 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
7951
7952 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
7953 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
7954
7955 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
7956
7957 </ol>
7958
7959 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
7960 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
7961 products based on the standard.</p>
7962 </blockquote>
7963
7964 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
7965 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
7966 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
7967 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
7968 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
7969 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
7970 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
7971 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
7972
7973 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
7974
7975 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
7976 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
7977 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
7978 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
7979 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
7980 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
7981 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
7982 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
7983 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
7984 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
7985 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
7986 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
7987 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
7988 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
7989
7990 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
7991
7992 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
7993 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
7994 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
7995 documentation indicating this.</p>
7996
7997 <p>According to
7998 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
7999 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
8000 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
8001 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
8002 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
8003 report is correct.</p>
8004
8005 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
8006
8007 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
8008 container format</a> and both the
8009 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
8010 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
8011 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
8012
8013 <blockquote>
8014
8015 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
8016 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
8017 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
8018 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
8019 specification compliance.
8020
8021 </blockquote>
8022
8023 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
8024 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
8025 this is the term:<p>
8026
8027 <blockquote>
8028
8029 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
8030 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
8031 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
8032 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
8033 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
8034 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
8035 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
8036 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
8037 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
8038 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
8039 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
8040 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
8041
8042 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
8043 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
8044 </blockquote>
8045
8046 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
8047 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
8048 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
8049 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
8050 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
8051
8052 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
8053
8054 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
8055 Theora format.
8056 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
8057 and
8058 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
8059 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
8060 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
8061 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
8062 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
8063 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
8064 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
8065 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
8066
8067 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
8068
8069 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
8070
8071 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8072
8073 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
8074 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
8075 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
8076 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
8077 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
8078 this.</p>
8079
8080 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
8081 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
8082
8083       </div>
8084       <div class="tags">
8085
8086
8087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8088
8089
8090       </div>
8091     </div>
8092     <div class="padding"></div>
8093
8094     <div class="entry">
8095       <div class="title">
8096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
8097       </div>
8098       <div class="date">
8099         25th December 2010
8100       </div>
8101       <div class="body">
8102         <p>A few days ago
8103 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
8104 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
8105 2.0 of
8106 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
8107 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
8108 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
8109 Nothing very surprising there, given
8110 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
8111 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
8112 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
8113 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
8114 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
8115 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
8116 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
8117 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
8118 standard definition from its content.</p>
8119
8120 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
8121 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
8122 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
8123 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
8124 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
8125 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
8126 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
8127 background information about that story is available in
8128 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
8129 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
8130
8131 <blockquote>
8132 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
8133 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
8134 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
8135
8136 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
8137
8138 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
8139
8140 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
8141
8142 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
8143
8144 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
8145
8146 <p>
8147 <ul>
8148 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
8149 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
8150 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
8151 </ul>
8152 </p>
8153
8154 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
8155
8156 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
8157
8158 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
8159
8160 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
8161
8162 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
8163
8164
8165 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
8166 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
8167 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
8168 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
8169 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
8170 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
8171
8172 </p>
8173
8174 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
8175
8176 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
8177
8178 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
8179
8180 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
8181
8182 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
8183
8184 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
8185
8186 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
8187
8188 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
8189
8190 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
8191
8192 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
8193
8194 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
8195
8196 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
8197
8198 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
8199
8200 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
8201
8202 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
8203
8204 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
8205
8206 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
8207
8208 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
8209
8210 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
8211
8212 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
8213
8214 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
8215
8216 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
8217
8218 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
8219
8220 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
8221
8222 <p>On security:</p>
8223
8224 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
8225
8226 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
8227
8228 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
8229
8230 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
8231
8232 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
8233
8234 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
8235
8236 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
8237
8238 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
8239
8240 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
8241
8242 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
8243
8244 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
8245
8246 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
8247
8248 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
8249
8250 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
8251
8252 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
8253
8254 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
8255
8256 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
8257
8258 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
8259
8260 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
8261
8262 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
8263
8264 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
8265
8266 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
8267
8268 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
8269
8270 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
8271
8272 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
8273
8274 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
8275
8276 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
8277
8278 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
8279
8280 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
8281
8282 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
8283
8284 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
8285
8286 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
8287
8288 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
8289
8290 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
8291
8292 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
8293
8294 <p>Cordially,<br>
8295 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
8296 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
8297 </blockquote>
8298
8299       </div>
8300       <div class="tags">
8301
8302
8303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8304
8305
8306       </div>
8307     </div>
8308     <div class="padding"></div>
8309
8310     <div class="entry">
8311       <div class="title">
8312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="date">
8315         25th December 2010
8316       </div>
8317       <div class="body">
8318         <p>Half a year ago I
8319 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
8320 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
8321 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
8322 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
8323
8324 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
8325 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
8326 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
8327 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
8328 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
8329 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
8330 got such a great test tool available.</p>
8331
8332       </div>
8333       <div class="tags">
8334
8335
8336         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8337
8338
8339       </div>
8340     </div>
8341     <div class="padding"></div>
8342
8343     <div class="entry">
8344       <div class="title">
8345         <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>
8346       </div>
8347       <div class="date">
8348         22nd December 2010
8349       </div>
8350       <div class="body">
8351         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
8352 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
8353 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
8354 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
8355 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
8356 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
8357 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
8358 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
8359 university.</p>
8360
8361 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
8362 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
8363 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8364 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
8365 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8366 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8367 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8368 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
8369
8370 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
8371 I perform on a new model.</p>
8372
8373 <ul>
8374
8375 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8376 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
8377 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
8378
8379 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
8380 installation, X.org is working.</li>
8381
8382 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
8383 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8384 reported by the program.</li>
8385
8386 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8387 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
8388 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8389 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
8390 normally test this by playing
8391 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8392 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
8393
8394 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
8395 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8396
8397 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8398 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8399
8400 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
8401 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
8402
8403 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8404 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
8405 few.</li>
8406
8407 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
8408 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8409 notice this.</li>
8410
8411 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
8412 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8413 resume.</li>
8414
8415 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8416 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8417 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
8418 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8419 not.</li>
8420
8421 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8422 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8423 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8424 existence.</li>
8425
8426 </ul>
8427
8428 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8429 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
8430 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
8431 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8432 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
8433 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
8434 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8435 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
8436
8437       </div>
8438       <div class="tags">
8439
8440
8441         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>.
8442
8443
8444       </div>
8445     </div>
8446     <div class="padding"></div>
8447
8448     <div class="entry">
8449       <div class="title">
8450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
8451       </div>
8452       <div class="date">
8453         11th December 2010
8454       </div>
8455       <div class="body">
8456         <p>As I continue to explore
8457 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
8458 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8459 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
8460
8461 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8462 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8463 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8464 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8465 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8466 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
8467 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
8468 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
8469 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
8470 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
8471 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
8472 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
8473 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
8474 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8475 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8476 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8477 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
8478 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8479 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8480 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
8481
8482 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8483 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8484 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8485 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8486 If the Skolelinux foundation
8487 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8488 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8489 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8490 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8491 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
8492 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
8493 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8494 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
8495
8496 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8497 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
8498 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8499 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8500 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
8501 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8502 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
8503 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8504 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8505 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8506 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
8507 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8508 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8509 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8510 currencies.</p>
8511
8512 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8513 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8514 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8515 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
8516 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8517 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8518 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8519 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
8520 BitCoins.  Check out
8521 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
8522 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
8523 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8524 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8525 yet.</p>
8526
8527 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
8528 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8529 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8530 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
8531 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
8532
8533       </div>
8534       <div class="tags">
8535
8536
8537         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>.
8538
8539
8540       </div>
8541     </div>
8542     <div class="padding"></div>
8543
8544     <div class="entry">
8545       <div class="title">
8546         <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>
8547       </div>
8548       <div class="date">
8549         10th December 2010
8550       </div>
8551       <div class="body">
8552         <p>With this weeks lawless
8553 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
8554 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
8555 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
8556 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
8557 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
8558 A blog post from
8559 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
8560 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
8561 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
8562 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
8563 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
8564 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
8565 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
8566
8567 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
8568 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
8569 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
8570 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
8571 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
8572 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
8573 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
8574 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
8575 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
8576 Debian</a> soon.</p>
8577
8578 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
8579 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
8580 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
8581 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
8582 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
8583 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
8584 you can even get
8585 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
8586 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
8587 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
8588 on the current exchange rates.</p>
8589
8590 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
8591 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
8592 donations to the address
8593 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
8594
8595       </div>
8596       <div class="tags">
8597
8598
8599         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>.
8600
8601
8602       </div>
8603     </div>
8604     <div class="padding"></div>
8605
8606     <div class="entry">
8607       <div class="title">
8608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
8609       </div>
8610       <div class="date">
8611          9th December 2010
8612       </div>
8613       <div class="body">
8614         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
8615 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
8616 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
8617 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
8618 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
8619 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
8620 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
8621 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
8622 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
8623 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
8624 operational.</p>
8625
8626 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
8627 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
8628 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
8629 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
8630 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
8631 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
8632 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
8633
8634       </div>
8635       <div class="tags">
8636
8637
8638         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
8639
8640
8641       </div>
8642     </div>
8643     <div class="padding"></div>
8644
8645     <div class="entry">
8646       <div class="title">
8647         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
8648       </div>
8649       <div class="date">
8650         29th November 2010
8651       </div>
8652       <div class="body">
8653         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8654 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
8655 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
8656 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
8657 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
8658 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
8659
8660 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
8661 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
8662 will hold its
8663 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
8664 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
8665 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
8666 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
8667 vote this year.</p>
8668
8669       </div>
8670       <div class="tags">
8671
8672
8673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8674
8675
8676       </div>
8677     </div>
8678     <div class="padding"></div>
8679
8680     <div class="entry">
8681       <div class="title">
8682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
8683       </div>
8684       <div class="date">
8685         27th November 2010
8686       </div>
8687       <div class="body">
8688         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8689 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8690 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8691 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8692 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
8693 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8694 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8695 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
8696
8697 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8698 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8699 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
8700 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8701 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8702 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
8703 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
8704 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8705 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
8706 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8707 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
8708
8709 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8710 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8711 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
8712 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8713 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
8714 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8715 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8716 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8717 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8718 what is going on.</p>
8719
8720       </div>
8721       <div class="tags">
8722
8723
8724         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>.
8725
8726
8727       </div>
8728     </div>
8729     <div class="padding"></div>
8730
8731     <div class="entry">
8732       <div class="title">
8733         <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>
8734       </div>
8735       <div class="date">
8736         22nd November 2010
8737       </div>
8738       <div class="body">
8739         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8740 upgrade testing of the
8741 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8742 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
8743 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8744 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
8745
8746 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8747
8748 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8749
8750 <blockquote><p>
8751   apache2.2-bin
8752   aptdaemon
8753   baobab
8754   binfmt-support
8755   browser-plugin-gnash
8756   cheese-common
8757   cli-common
8758   cups-pk-helper
8759   dmz-cursor-theme
8760   empathy
8761   empathy-common
8762   freedesktop-sound-theme
8763   freeglut3
8764   gconf-defaults-service
8765   gdm-themes
8766   gedit-plugins
8767   geoclue
8768   geoclue-hostip
8769   geoclue-localnet
8770   geoclue-manual
8771   geoclue-yahoo
8772   gnash
8773   gnash-common
8774   gnome
8775   gnome-backgrounds
8776   gnome-cards-data
8777   gnome-codec-install
8778   gnome-core
8779   gnome-desktop-environment
8780   gnome-disk-utility
8781   gnome-screenshot
8782   gnome-search-tool
8783   gnome-session-canberra
8784   gnome-system-log
8785   gnome-themes-extras
8786   gnome-themes-more
8787   gnome-user-share
8788   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8789   gstreamer0.10-tools
8790   gtk2-engines
8791   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8792   gtk2-engines-smooth
8793   hamster-applet
8794   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8795   libapr1
8796   libaprutil1
8797   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8798   libaprutil1-ldap
8799   libart2.0-cil
8800   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8801   libboost-python1.42.0
8802   libboost-thread1.42.0
8803   libchamplain-0.4-0
8804   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8805   libcheese-gtk18
8806   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8807   libcryptui0
8808   libdiscid0
8809   libelf1
8810   libepc-1.0-2
8811   libepc-common
8812   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8813   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8814   libfreerdp0
8815   libgconf2.0-cil
8816   libgdata-common
8817   libgdata7
8818   libgdu-gtk0
8819   libgee2
8820   libgeoclue0
8821   libgexiv2-0
8822   libgif4
8823   libglade2.0-cil
8824   libglib2.0-cil
8825   libgmime2.4-cil
8826   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8827   libgnome2.24-cil
8828   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8829   libgpod-common
8830   libgpod4
8831   libgtk2.0-cil
8832   libgtkglext1
8833   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8834   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8835   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8836   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8837   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8838   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8839   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8840   libmono-security2.0-cil
8841   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8842   libmono-system2.0-cil
8843   libmtp8
8844   libmusicbrainz3-6
8845   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8846   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8847   libopal3.6.8
8848   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8849   libpt2.6.7
8850   libpython2.6
8851   librpm1
8852   librpmio1
8853   libsdl1.2debian
8854   libsrtp0
8855   libssh-4
8856   libtelepathy-farsight0
8857   libtelepathy-glib0
8858   libtidy-0.99-0
8859   media-player-info
8860   mesa-utils
8861   mono-2.0-gac
8862   mono-gac
8863   mono-runtime
8864   nautilus-sendto
8865   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8866   p7zip-full
8867   pkg-config
8868   python-aptdaemon
8869   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8870   python-axiom
8871   python-beautifulsoup
8872   python-bugbuddy
8873   python-clientform
8874   python-coherence
8875   python-configobj
8876   python-crypto
8877   python-cupshelpers
8878   python-elementtree
8879   python-epsilon
8880   python-evolution
8881   python-feedparser
8882   python-gdata
8883   python-gdbm
8884   python-gst0.10
8885   python-gtkglext1
8886   python-gtksourceview2
8887   python-httplib2
8888   python-louie
8889   python-mako
8890   python-markupsafe
8891   python-mechanize
8892   python-nevow
8893   python-notify
8894   python-opengl
8895   python-openssl
8896   python-pam
8897   python-pkg-resources
8898   python-pyasn1
8899   python-pysqlite2
8900   python-rdflib
8901   python-serial
8902   python-tagpy
8903   python-twisted-bin
8904   python-twisted-conch
8905   python-twisted-core
8906   python-twisted-web
8907   python-utidylib
8908   python-webkit
8909   python-xdg
8910   python-zope.interface
8911   remmina
8912   remmina-plugin-data
8913   remmina-plugin-rdp
8914   remmina-plugin-vnc
8915   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8916   rhythmbox-plugins
8917   rpm-common
8918   rpm2cpio
8919   seahorse-plugins
8920   shotwell
8921   software-center
8922   system-config-printer-udev
8923   telepathy-gabble
8924   telepathy-mission-control-5
8925   telepathy-salut
8926   tomboy
8927   totem
8928   totem-coherence
8929   totem-mozilla
8930   totem-plugins
8931   transmission-common
8932   xdg-user-dirs
8933   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
8934   xserver-xephyr
8935 </p></blockquote>
8936
8937 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8938
8939 <blockquote><p>
8940   cheese
8941   ekiga
8942   eog
8943   epiphany-extensions
8944   evolution-exchange
8945   fast-user-switch-applet
8946   file-roller
8947   gcalctool
8948   gconf-editor
8949   gdm
8950   gedit
8951   gedit-common
8952   gnome-games
8953   gnome-games-data
8954   gnome-nettool
8955   gnome-system-tools
8956   gnome-themes
8957   gnuchess
8958   gucharmap
8959   guile-1.8-libs
8960   libavahi-ui0
8961   libdmx1
8962   libgalago3
8963   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8964   libgtksourceview2.0-0
8965   liblircclient0
8966   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8967   libspeexdsp1
8968   libsvga1
8969   rhythmbox
8970   seahorse
8971   sound-juicer
8972   system-config-printer
8973   totem-common
8974   transmission-gtk
8975   vinagre
8976   vino
8977 </p></blockquote>
8978
8979 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8980
8981 <blockquote><p>
8982   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8983 </p></blockquote>
8984
8985 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8986
8987 <blockquote><p>
8988 [nothing]
8989 </p></blockquote>
8990
8991 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8992
8993 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8994
8995 <blockquote><p>
8996   ksmserver
8997 </p></blockquote>
8998
8999 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9000
9001 <blockquote><p>
9002   kwin
9003   network-manager-kde
9004 </p></blockquote>
9005
9006 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9007
9008 <blockquote><p>
9009   arts
9010   dolphin
9011   freespacenotifier
9012   google-gadgets-gst
9013   google-gadgets-xul
9014   kappfinder
9015   kcalc
9016   kcharselect
9017   kde-core
9018   kde-plasma-desktop
9019   kde-standard
9020   kde-window-manager
9021   kdeartwork
9022   kdeartwork-emoticons
9023   kdeartwork-style
9024   kdeartwork-theme-icon
9025   kdebase
9026   kdebase-apps
9027   kdebase-workspace
9028   kdebase-workspace-bin
9029   kdebase-workspace-data
9030   kdeeject
9031   kdelibs
9032   kdeplasma-addons
9033   kdeutils
9034   kdewallpapers
9035   kdf
9036   kfloppy
9037   kgpg
9038   khelpcenter4
9039   kinfocenter
9040   konq-plugins-l10n
9041   konqueror-nsplugins
9042   kscreensaver
9043   kscreensaver-xsavers
9044   ktimer
9045   kwrite
9046   libgle3
9047   libkde4-ruby1.8
9048   libkonq5
9049   libkonq5-templates
9050   libnetpbm10
9051   libplasma-ruby
9052   libplasma-ruby1.8
9053   libqt4-ruby1.8
9054   marble-data
9055   marble-plugins
9056   netpbm
9057   nuvola-icon-theme
9058   plasma-dataengines-workspace
9059   plasma-desktop
9060   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
9061   plasma-runners-addons
9062   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
9063   plasma-scriptengine-python
9064   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
9065   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
9066   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
9067   plasma-scriptengines
9068   plasma-wallpapers-addons
9069   plasma-widget-folderview
9070   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9071   ruby
9072   sweeper
9073   update-notifier-kde
9074   xscreensaver-data-extra
9075   xscreensaver-gl
9076   xscreensaver-gl-extra
9077   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9078 </p></blockquote>
9079
9080 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9081
9082 <blockquote><p>
9083   ark
9084   google-gadgets-common
9085   google-gadgets-qt
9086   htdig
9087   kate
9088   kdebase-bin
9089   kdebase-data
9090   kdepasswd
9091   kfind
9092   klipper
9093   konq-plugins
9094   konqueror
9095   ksysguard
9096   ksysguardd
9097   libarchive1
9098   libcln6
9099   libeet1
9100   libeina-svn-06
9101   libggadget-1.0-0b
9102   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
9103   libgps19
9104   libkdecorations4
9105   libkephal4
9106   libkonq4
9107   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
9108   libkscreensaver5
9109   libksgrd4
9110   libksignalplotter4
9111   libkunitconversion4
9112   libkwineffects1a
9113   libmarblewidget4
9114   libntrack-qt4-1
9115   libntrack0
9116   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
9117   libplasmaclock4a
9118   libplasmagenericshell4
9119   libprocesscore4a
9120   libprocessui4a
9121   libqalculate5
9122   libqedje0a
9123   libqtruby4shared2
9124   libqzion0a
9125   libruby1.8
9126   libscim8c2a
9127   libsmokekdecore4-3
9128   libsmokekdeui4-3
9129   libsmokekfile3
9130   libsmokekhtml3
9131   libsmokekio3
9132   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
9133   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
9134   libsmokekparts3
9135   libsmokektexteditor3
9136   libsmokekutils3
9137   libsmokenepomuk3
9138   libsmokephonon3
9139   libsmokeplasma3
9140   libsmokeqtcore4-3
9141   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
9142   libsmokeqtgui4-3
9143   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
9144   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
9145   libsmokeqtscript4-3
9146   libsmokeqtsql4-3
9147   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
9148   libsmokeqttest4-3
9149   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
9150   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
9151   libsmokeqtxml4-3
9152   libsmokesolid3
9153   libsmokesoprano3
9154   libtaskmanager4a
9155   libtidy-0.99-0
9156   libweather-ion4a
9157   libxklavier16
9158   libxxf86misc1
9159   okteta
9160   oxygencursors
9161   plasma-dataengines-addons
9162   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
9163   plasma-widget-lancelot
9164   plasma-widgets-addons
9165   plasma-widgets-workspace
9166   polkit-kde-1
9167   ruby1.8
9168   systemsettings
9169   update-notifier-common
9170 </p></blockquote>
9171
9172 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
9173 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
9174 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
9175 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
9176
9177       </div>
9178       <div class="tags">
9179
9180
9181         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>.
9182
9183
9184       </div>
9185     </div>
9186     <div class="padding"></div>
9187
9188     <div class="entry">
9189       <div class="title">
9190         <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>
9191       </div>
9192       <div class="date">
9193         22nd November 2010
9194       </div>
9195       <div class="body">
9196         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
9197 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
9198 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
9199 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
9200 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
9201 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
9202 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
9203 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
9204 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
9205
9206 <p>I found
9207 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
9208 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
9209 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
9210 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
9211 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
9212 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
9213
9214 <pre>
9215 #!/bin/sh
9216
9217 # Based on
9218 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
9219
9220 set -e
9221 set -x
9222
9223 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
9224     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
9225     exit 1
9226 else
9227     host="$1"
9228 fi
9229
9230 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
9231     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
9232     exit 1
9233 fi
9234
9235 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
9236 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9237 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9238 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
9239
9240 img=$host.img
9241 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
9242 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
9243
9244 parted $img mklabel msdos
9245 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
9246 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
9247 parted $img set 1 boot on
9248
9249 modprobe dm-mod
9250 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
9251 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
9252
9253 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
9254 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
9255 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
9256
9257 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
9258 losetup -d /dev/loop0
9259 </pre>
9260
9261 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
9262 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
9263
9264 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
9265 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
9266 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
9267 seem to work just fine.</p>
9268
9269       </div>
9270       <div class="tags">
9271
9272
9273         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>.
9274
9275
9276       </div>
9277     </div>
9278     <div class="padding"></div>
9279
9280     <div class="entry">
9281       <div class="title">
9282         <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>
9283       </div>
9284       <div class="date">
9285         20th November 2010
9286       </div>
9287       <div class="body">
9288         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
9289 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9290 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
9291 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
9292
9293 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
9294 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
9295 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
9296
9297 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9298
9299 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9300
9301 <blockquote><p>
9302   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
9303   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
9304   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
9305   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
9306   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
9307   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
9308   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
9309   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
9310   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
9311   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
9312   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9313   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9314   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
9315   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
9316   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
9317   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
9318   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
9319   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
9320   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9321   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
9322   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
9323   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9324   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
9325   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
9326   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
9327   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9328   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9329   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
9330   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9331   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
9332   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
9333   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9334   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
9335   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
9336   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
9337   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
9338   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
9339   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
9340   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
9341   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
9342   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
9343   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
9344   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
9345   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
9346   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
9347   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
9348   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
9349   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
9350   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
9351   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
9352   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
9353   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
9354   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9355   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
9356   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
9357   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
9358   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
9359   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
9360   zip
9361 </p></blockquote>
9362
9363 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
9364
9365 <blockquote><p>
9366   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
9367   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
9368   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
9369   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
9370   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
9371   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
9372   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
9373   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
9374   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
9375   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
9376   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
9377   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9378   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9379   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9380   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9381   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
9382   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9383   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
9384   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
9385   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
9386   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
9387   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
9388   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9389   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
9390   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
9391   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
9392   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
9393   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
9394   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
9395 </p></blockquote>
9396
9397 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9398
9399 <blockquote><p>
9400   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9401 </p></blockquote>
9402
9403 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9404
9405 <blockquote><p>
9406 [nothing]
9407 </p></blockquote>
9408
9409 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9410
9411 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9412
9413 <blockquote><p>
9414   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
9415   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9416   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
9417   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
9418   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
9419   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
9420   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9421   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
9422   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
9423   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9424   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
9425   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
9426   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
9427   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
9428   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
9429   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
9430   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
9431   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
9432   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
9433   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
9434   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
9435   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
9436   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9437   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9438   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9439   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9440   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9441   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9442   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9443   ttf-sazanami-gothic
9444 </p></blockquote>
9445
9446 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9447
9448 <blockquote><p>
9449   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9450   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9451   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9452   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9453   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9454   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9455   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9456   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9457   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9458   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9459   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9460   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9461   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9462   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9463   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9464   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9465   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
9466   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9467   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9468   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
9469   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9470   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9471   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9472   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9473   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9474   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9475   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9476   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
9477   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
9478   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9479   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9480   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9481   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9482 </p></blockquote>
9483
9484 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9485
9486 <blockquote><p>
9487   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9488   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9489   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9490   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9491   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9492   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9493   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9494 </p></blockquote>
9495
9496 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9497
9498 <blockquote><p>
9499   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9500 </p></blockquote>
9501
9502       </div>
9503       <div class="tags">
9504
9505
9506         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>.
9507
9508
9509       </div>
9510     </div>
9511     <div class="padding"></div>
9512
9513     <div class="entry">
9514       <div class="title">
9515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
9516       </div>
9517       <div class="date">
9518         20th November 2010
9519       </div>
9520       <div class="body">
9521         <p>Answering
9522 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9523 call from the Gnash project</a> for
9524 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
9525 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9526 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9527 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9528 releases out more often.</p>
9529
9530 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9531 I have considered setting up a <a
9532 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
9533 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9534 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
9535 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
9536 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9537 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9538 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9539 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
9540 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9541 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9542 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
9543 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
9544
9545       </div>
9546       <div class="tags">
9547
9548
9549         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>.
9550
9551
9552       </div>
9553     </div>
9554     <div class="padding"></div>
9555
9556     <div class="entry">
9557       <div class="title">
9558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
9559       </div>
9560       <div class="date">
9561          9th November 2010
9562       </div>
9563       <div class="body">
9564         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9565
9566 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
9567 3D linked in from
9568 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9569 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
9570
9571       </div>
9572       <div class="tags">
9573
9574
9575         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>.
9576
9577
9578       </div>
9579     </div>
9580     <div class="padding"></div>
9581
9582     <div class="entry">
9583       <div class="title">
9584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
9585       </div>
9586       <div class="date">
9587          7th November 2010
9588       </div>
9589       <div class="body">
9590         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
9591 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
9592 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
9593 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
9594 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
9595 working using this DVD.</p>
9596
9597 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
9598 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
9599 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
9600 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
9601 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
9602 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
9603 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
9604
9605 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
9606 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
9607 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
9608 Debian archive.</p>
9609
9610 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
9611 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
9612 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
9613 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
9614 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
9615 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
9616 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
9617 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
9618 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
9619 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
9620 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
9621 free X driver should work.</p>
9622
9623 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
9624 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
9625 DVD more useful again.</p>
9626
9627       </div>
9628       <div class="tags">
9629
9630
9631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9632
9633
9634       </div>
9635     </div>
9636     <div class="padding"></div>
9637
9638     <div class="entry">
9639       <div class="title">
9640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
9641       </div>
9642       <div class="date">
9643         24th October 2010
9644       </div>
9645       <div class="body">
9646         <p>Some updates.</p>
9647
9648 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
9649 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
9650 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
9651 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9652 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
9653 :)</p>
9654
9655 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9656 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9657 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9658 It is called
9659 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
9660 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
9661 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9662 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9663 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9664 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
9665
9666 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
9667 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
9668 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
9669 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
9670 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
9671 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
9672 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
9673 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
9674 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
9675 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
9676
9677       </div>
9678       <div class="tags">
9679
9680
9681         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>.
9682
9683
9684       </div>
9685     </div>
9686     <div class="padding"></div>
9687
9688     <div class="entry">
9689       <div class="title">
9690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
9691       </div>
9692       <div class="date">
9693         19th October 2010
9694       </div>
9695       <div class="body">
9696         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
9697 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
9698 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
9699 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
9700 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
9701 AVM2 flash files.</p>
9702
9703 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
9704 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
9705 following text:</P>
9706
9707 <p><blockquote>
9708
9709   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
9710   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
9711
9712   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
9713
9714   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
9715
9716   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
9717   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
9718   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
9719   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
9720   days. The project web page is available from
9721   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
9722   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
9723   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
9724
9725   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
9726   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
9727   to get this to happen.</p>
9728
9729   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
9730   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
9731
9732 </blockquote></p>
9733
9734 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
9735 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
9736 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
9737 :)</p>
9738
9739       </div>
9740       <div class="tags">
9741
9742
9743         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9744
9745
9746       </div>
9747     </div>
9748     <div class="padding"></div>
9749
9750     <div class="entry">
9751       <div class="title">
9752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
9753       </div>
9754       <div class="date">
9755          9th October 2010
9756       </div>
9757       <div class="body">
9758         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
9759 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
9760 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
9761 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
9762 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
9763 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
9764 robots.</p>
9765
9766 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
9767 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
9768 a few less important features too.</p>
9769
9770 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
9771 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
9772 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
9773 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
9774
9775 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
9776 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
9777 source or binary package:</p>
9778
9779 <p><ul>
9780 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
9781 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
9782 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
9783 </ul></p>
9784
9785 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
9786 please let me know.</p>
9787
9788       </div>
9789       <div class="tags">
9790
9791
9792         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9793
9794
9795       </div>
9796     </div>
9797     <div class="padding"></div>
9798
9799     <div class="entry">
9800       <div class="title">
9801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
9802       </div>
9803       <div class="date">
9804          3rd October 2010
9805       </div>
9806       <div class="body">
9807         <p><ul>
9808
9809 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
9810 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
9811
9812 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
9813 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
9814 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
9815
9816 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
9817 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
9818 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
9819 simple setup.
9820
9821 </ul></p>
9822
9823       </div>
9824       <div class="tags">
9825
9826
9827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9828
9829
9830       </div>
9831     </div>
9832     <div class="padding"></div>
9833
9834     <div class="entry">
9835       <div class="title">
9836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
9837       </div>
9838       <div class="date">
9839          9th September 2010
9840       </div>
9841       <div class="body">
9842         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
9843 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
9844 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
9845 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
9846 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
9847 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
9848 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
9849 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
9850 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
9851
9852 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
9853 written:</p>
9854
9855 <blockquote>
9856 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
9857 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
9858 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
9859 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
9860 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
9861
9862 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
9863 standard.</p>
9864 </blockquote>
9865
9866 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
9867 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
9868 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
9869 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
9870
9871 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
9872 read
9873 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
9874 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
9875 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
9876 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
9877 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
9878 the issue.  The solution is to support the
9879 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9880 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
9881 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
9882
9883       </div>
9884       <div class="tags">
9885
9886
9887         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9888
9889
9890       </div>
9891     </div>
9892     <div class="padding"></div>
9893
9894     <div class="entry">
9895       <div class="title">
9896         <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>
9897       </div>
9898       <div class="date">
9899          4th September 2010
9900       </div>
9901       <div class="body">
9902         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
9903 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9904 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9905 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9906 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9907 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9908 installed.</p>
9909
9910 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9911 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
9912 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9913 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9914 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9915 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9916 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9917 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9918 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9919
9920 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9921 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9922 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9923 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9924 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9925 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9926 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9927 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9928 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9929 pages they want to visit.</p>
9930
9931 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9932 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9933 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9934 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9935 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9936 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9937 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9938 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9939 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9940 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9941 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9942
9943       </div>
9944       <div class="tags">
9945
9946
9947         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>.
9948
9949
9950       </div>
9951     </div>
9952     <div class="padding"></div>
9953
9954     <div class="entry">
9955       <div class="title">
9956         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
9957       </div>
9958       <div class="date">
9959          1st September 2010
9960       </div>
9961       <div class="body">
9962         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
9963 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
9964 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
9965 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
9966 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
9967 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
9968 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
9969 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
9970 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
9971 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
9972 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
9973 drive around.</p>
9974
9975 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
9976 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
9977
9978 <p><pre>
9979 use Spykee;
9980 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
9981 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
9982 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
9983 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
9984 $spykee->left();
9985 sleep 2;
9986 $spykee->right();
9987 sleep 2;
9988 $spykee->forward();
9989 sleep 2;
9990 $spykee->back();
9991 sleep 2;
9992 $spykee->stop();
9993 </pre></p>
9994
9995 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
9996 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
9997 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
9998 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
9999 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
10000 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
10001 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
10002 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
10003 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
10004 going. :).</p>
10005
10006 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
10007 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
10008 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
10009 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
10010
10011       </div>
10012       <div class="tags">
10013
10014
10015         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10016
10017
10018       </div>
10019     </div>
10020     <div class="padding"></div>
10021
10022     <div class="entry">
10023       <div class="title">
10024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
10025       </div>
10026       <div class="date">
10027         30th August 2010
10028       </div>
10029       <div class="body">
10030         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
10031 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
10032 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
10033 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
10034 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
10035 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
10036 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
10037
10038 <pre>
10039 % ln foo bar
10040 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
10041 %
10042 </pre>
10043
10044 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
10045 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
10046 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
10047 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
10048 nevertheless. :)</p>
10049
10050 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
10051 git from
10052 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
10053
10054       </div>
10055       <div class="tags">
10056
10057
10058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10059
10060
10061       </div>
10062     </div>
10063     <div class="padding"></div>
10064
10065     <div class="entry">
10066       <div class="title">
10067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
10068       </div>
10069       <div class="date">
10070         26th August 2010
10071       </div>
10072       <div class="body">
10073         <p>My file system sematics program
10074 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
10075 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
10076 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
10077 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
10078 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
10079 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
10080 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
10081 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
10082 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
10083 script:</p>
10084
10085 <pre>
10086 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
10087   mode_t retval = 0;
10088   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
10089   if (-1 != fd) {
10090     unlink(name);
10091     struct stat statbuf;
10092     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
10093       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
10094     }
10095     close(fd);
10096   }
10097   return retval;
10098 }
10099
10100 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
10101 int test_umask(void) {
10102   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
10103
10104   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
10105   mode_t newmode;
10106   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
10107     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
10108            newmode);
10109   }
10110   umask(007);
10111   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
10112     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
10113            newmode);
10114   }
10115
10116   umask (orig_umask);
10117   return 0;
10118 }
10119
10120 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
10121   [...]
10122   test_umask();
10123   return 0;
10124 }
10125 </pre>
10126
10127 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
10128
10129 <pre>
10130 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10131 info: testing symlink creation
10132 info: testing subdirectory creation
10133 info: testing fcntl locking
10134   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10135   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10136   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10137   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10138   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10139   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10140 info: testing umask effect on file creation
10141 </pre>
10142
10143 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
10144 result:</p>
10145
10146 <pre>
10147 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10148 info: testing symlink creation
10149 info: testing subdirectory creation
10150 info: testing fcntl locking
10151   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10152   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10153   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10154   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10155   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10156   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10157 info: testing umask effect on file creation
10158   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
10159   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
10160 </pre>
10161
10162 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
10163 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
10164 directory.</p>
10165
10166 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
10167 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
10168
10169 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
10170 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
10171 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
10172
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="tags">
10175
10176
10177         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10178
10179
10180       </div>
10181     </div>
10182     <div class="padding"></div>
10183
10184     <div class="entry">
10185       <div class="title">
10186         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
10187       </div>
10188       <div class="date">
10189         15th August 2010
10190       </div>
10191       <div class="body">
10192         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
10193 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
10194 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
10195 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
10196 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
10197 long time.</p>
10198
10199       </div>
10200       <div class="tags">
10201
10202
10203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10204
10205
10206       </div>
10207     </div>
10208     <div class="padding"></div>
10209
10210     <div class="entry">
10211       <div class="title">
10212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
10213       </div>
10214       <div class="date">
10215          9th August 2010
10216       </div>
10217       <div class="body">
10218         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
10219 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
10220 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
10221 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
10222 generated configuration.</p>
10223
10224 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
10225 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
10226 without any manual configuration.</p>
10227
10228 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
10229 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
10230 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
10231 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
10232 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
10233 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
10234 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
10235 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
10236 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
10237 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
10238 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
10239 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
10240 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
10241 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
10242 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
10243 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
10244 use.</p>
10245
10246 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
10247 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
10248 working properly out of the box:</p>
10249
10250 <ul>
10251 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
10252 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
10253 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
10254 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
10255 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
10256 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
10257 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
10258 </ul>
10259
10260 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
10261
10262 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
10263 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
10264 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
10265 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
10266 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
10267
10268 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
10269 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
10270 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
10271 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
10272 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
10273 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
10274 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
10275 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
10276
10277 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
10278 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
10279 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
10280 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
10281 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
10282 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
10283 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
10284 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
10285 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
10286 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
10287 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
10288 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
10289 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
10290 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
10291 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
10292 current DNS domain is used.</p>
10293
10294 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
10295 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
10296 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
10297 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
10298 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
10299 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
10300 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
10301 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
10302 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
10303 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
10304 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
10305 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
10306 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
10307
10308 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
10309 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
10310 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
10311 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
10312 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
10313 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
10314 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
10315 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
10316 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
10317 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
10318 do for now. :)</p>
10319
10320 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
10321 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
10322 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
10323 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
10324 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
10325 yet.</p>
10326
10327 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
10328 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10329
10330 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
10331 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
10332 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
10333 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
10334
10335       </div>
10336       <div class="tags">
10337
10338
10339         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10340
10341
10342       </div>
10343     </div>
10344     <div class="padding"></div>
10345
10346     <div class="entry">
10347       <div class="title">
10348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
10349       </div>
10350       <div class="date">
10351          8th August 2010
10352       </div>
10353       <div class="body">
10354         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
10355 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
10356 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
10357 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
10358 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
10359 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
10360 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
10361
10362 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
10363 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
10364 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
10365 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
10366 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
10367 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
10368 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
10369
10370 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
10371 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
10372 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
10373 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
10374 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
10375
10376 <pre>
10377 /*
10378  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
10379  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
10380  * directory.
10381  * License: GPL v2 or later
10382  *
10383  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
10384  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
10385 */
10386
10387 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
10388 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
10389 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
10390
10391 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
10392
10393 #include &lt;errno.h>
10394 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
10395 #include &lt;stdio.h>
10396 #include &lt;string.h>
10397 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
10398 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
10399 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
10400 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
10401 #include &lt;unistd.h>
10402
10403 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
10404 /*
10405  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
10406  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
10407  * below.
10408  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
10409  */
10410 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
10411 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
10412   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
10413 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
10414   char *zErrMsg;
10415   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
10416   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
10417   unlink(name);
10418   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
10419   if( rc ){
10420     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
10421     sqlite3_close(db);
10422     return -1;
10423   }
10424
10425   /* create tables */
10426   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
10427   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
10428     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
10429     sqlite3_close(db);
10430     return -1;
10431   }
10432   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
10433   sqlite3_close(db);
10434   return 0;
10435 }
10436 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
10437
10438 /*
10439  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
10440  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
10441  * done in the sqlite3 library.
10442  * See also
10443  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
10444  * POSIX specification
10445  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
10446  */
10447 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
10448   struct flock fl;
10449   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
10450   unlink(name);
10451   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
10452   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
10453
10454   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
10455   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
10456   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
10457   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10458   fl.l_len    = 1;
10459   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
10460   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10461
10462   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
10463   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
10464   fl.l_len    = 510;
10465   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
10466   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10467
10468   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
10469   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10470   fl.l_len    = 1;
10471   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
10472   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10473
10474   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
10475   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10476   fl.l_len    = 1;
10477   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
10478   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10479
10480   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
10481   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
10482   fl.l_len    = 510;
10483   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10484
10485   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
10486   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10487   fl.l_len    = 2;
10488   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
10489   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10490
10491   close(fd);
10492   return 0;
10493 }
10494
10495 /*
10496  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
10497  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
10498  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
10499  * slowing down file operations.
10500  */
10501 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
10502 #define LEVELS 5
10503   char *path = strdup("test");
10504   char *dirs[LEVELS];
10505   int level;
10506   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
10507   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
10508     char *newpath = NULL;
10509     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
10510       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
10511              path, strerror(errno));
10512       break;
10513     }
10514     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
10515     free(path);
10516     path = newpath;
10517   }
10518   return 0;
10519 }
10520
10521 /*
10522  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
10523  * KDE.
10524  */
10525 int test_symlinks(void) {
10526   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
10527   unlink("symlink");
10528   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
10529     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
10530   return 0;
10531 }
10532
10533 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
10534   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
10535   test_symlinks();
10536   test_subdirectory_creation();
10537 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
10538   test_sqlite_open();
10539 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
10540   test_gcompris_locking();
10541   return 0;
10542 }
10543 </pre>
10544
10545 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
10546 this:</p>
10547
10548 <pre>
10549 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10550 info: testing symlink creation
10551 info: testing subdirectory creation
10552 info: sqlite worked
10553 info: testing fcntl locking
10554   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10555   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10556   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10557   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10558   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10559   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10560 </pre>
10561
10562 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
10563 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
10564 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
10565 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
10566 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
10567 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
10568 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
10569 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
10570
10571 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
10572 it. :)</p>
10573
10574 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
10575 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
10576 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
10577
10578       </div>
10579       <div class="tags">
10580
10581
10582         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10583
10584
10585       </div>
10586     </div>
10587     <div class="padding"></div>
10588
10589     <div class="entry">
10590       <div class="title">
10591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
10592       </div>
10593       <div class="date">
10594          7th August 2010
10595       </div>
10596       <div class="body">
10597         <p>A few days ago, I
10598 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
10599 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
10600 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
10601 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
10602 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
10603 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
10604 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
10605 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
10606 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
10607
10608 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
10609 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
10610 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
10611 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
10612 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
10613 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
10614 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
10615 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
10616 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
10617 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
10618 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
10619 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
10620 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
10621 gave it a IP address.</p>
10622
10623 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
10624 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
10625 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
10626 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
10627 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
10628 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
10629 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
10630 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
10631
10632 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
10633 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
10634 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
10635 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
10636 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
10637 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
10638
10639 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
10640 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
10641 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
10642 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
10643 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
10644 with UID and GID values.</p>
10645
10646 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
10647 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10648
10649       </div>
10650       <div class="tags">
10651
10652
10653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10654
10655
10656       </div>
10657     </div>
10658     <div class="padding"></div>
10659
10660     <div class="entry">
10661       <div class="title">
10662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
10663       </div>
10664       <div class="date">
10665          3rd August 2010
10666       </div>
10667       <div class="body">
10668         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
10669 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
10670 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
10671 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
10672 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
10673 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
10674 servers.</p>
10675
10676 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
10677 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
10678 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
10679 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
10680 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
10681 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
10682 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
10683 .uio.no.</p>
10684
10685 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
10686 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
10687 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
10688 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
10689 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
10690 university servers.</p>
10691
10692 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
10693 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
10694 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
10695 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
10696 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
10697 uses.</p>
10698
10699       </div>
10700       <div class="tags">
10701
10702
10703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10704
10705
10706       </div>
10707     </div>
10708     <div class="padding"></div>
10709
10710     <div class="entry">
10711       <div class="title">
10712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
10713       </div>
10714       <div class="date">
10715         27th July 2010
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="body">
10718         <p>I discovered this while doing
10719 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
10720 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
10721 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
10722 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
10723 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
10724
10725 <p>An example is from todays
10726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
10727 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
10728 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
10729 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
10730 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
10731 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
10732 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
10733
10734 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
10735
10736 <blockquote><pre>
10737 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
10738  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
10739   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
10740 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
10741  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
10742 </pre></blockquote>
10743
10744 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
10745 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
10746 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
10747 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
10748 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
10749 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
10750 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
10751 of dependency loops.</p>
10752
10753 <p>Thanks to
10754 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10755 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
10756 dependencies
10757 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10758 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
10759
10760 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10761 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
10762 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
10763 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10764 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10765 it.</p>
10766
10767       </div>
10768       <div class="tags">
10769
10770
10771         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>.
10772
10773
10774       </div>
10775     </div>
10776     <div class="padding"></div>
10777
10778     <div class="entry">
10779       <div class="title">
10780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
10781       </div>
10782       <div class="date">
10783         27th July 2010
10784       </div>
10785       <div class="body">
10786         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
10787 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
10788 completed.</p>
10789
10790 <blockquote>
10791 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
10792 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
10793 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
10794 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
10795 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
10796 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
10797 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
10798 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
10799
10800 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
10801 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
10802 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
10803
10804 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
10805 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
10806 much.</p>
10807
10808 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
10809
10810 <ul>
10811 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
10812 <ul>
10813   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
10814          combination with some new artwork
10815   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
10816   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
10817   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
10818   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
10819   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
10820   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
10821   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
10822   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
10823   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
10824 </ul></li>
10825 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
10826     Enabled for:
10827 <ul>
10828   <li>PAM
10829   <li>LDAP
10830   <li>IMAP
10831   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
10832 </ul>
10833 </li>
10834 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
10835 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
10836     fetched from LDAP.</li>
10837 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
10838 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
10839 </ul>
10840 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
10841
10842 <ul>
10843 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
10844     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
10845     for testing.</li>
10846 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
10847     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
10848     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
10849 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
10850 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
10851 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
10852 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
10853     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
10854 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
10855     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
10856     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
10857 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
10858     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
10859     and help out with translations.</li>
10860 </ul>
10861
10862 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
10863
10864 <ul>
10865 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
10866 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
10867 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10868 </ul>
10869 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
10870
10871 <ul>
10872 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
10873 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
10874 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10875 </ul>
10876
10877 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
10878 get closer to the final release.</p>
10879
10880 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
10881
10882 <ul>
10883 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10884 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10885 </ul>
10886
10887 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
10888 <ul>
10889 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10890 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10891 </ul>
10892 <p>How to report bugs:
10893 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
10894
10895 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
10896 </blockquote>
10897
10898       </div>
10899       <div class="tags">
10900
10901
10902         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10903
10904
10905       </div>
10906     </div>
10907     <div class="padding"></div>
10908
10909     <div class="entry">
10910       <div class="title">
10911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
10912       </div>
10913       <div class="date">
10914         25th July 2010
10915       </div>
10916       <div class="body">
10917         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
10918 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
10919 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
10920 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
10921 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
10922
10923 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
10924 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
10925 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
10926 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
10927 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
10928 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
10929 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
10930
10931 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
10932 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
10933 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
10934 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
10935 up. :)</p>
10936
10937 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
10938 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
10939 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
10940
10941 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
10942 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
10943 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
10944 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
10945 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
10946 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
10947 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
10948 release another day.</p>
10949
10950 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
10951 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10952
10953       </div>
10954       <div class="tags">
10955
10956
10957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10958
10959
10960       </div>
10961     </div>
10962     <div class="padding"></div>
10963
10964     <div class="entry">
10965       <div class="title">
10966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
10967       </div>
10968       <div class="date">
10969         18th July 2010
10970       </div>
10971       <div class="body">
10972         <p>Thanks to
10973 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
10974 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
10975 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
10976 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
10977 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
10978 only available from the development server, until more experience is
10979 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
10980
10981 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
10982 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
10983 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
10984 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
10985 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
10986 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
10987 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
10988
10989       </div>
10990       <div class="tags">
10991
10992
10993         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10994
10995
10996       </div>
10997     </div>
10998     <div class="padding"></div>
10999
11000     <div class="entry">
11001       <div class="title">
11002         <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>
11003       </div>
11004       <div class="date">
11005         17th July 2010
11006       </div>
11007       <div class="body">
11008         <p>This is a
11009 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
11010 on my
11011 <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
11012 work</a> on
11013 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
11014 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
11015
11016 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
11017 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
11018 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
11019 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
11020
11021 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11022 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11023 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
11024
11025 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
11026
11027 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
11028 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11029 the web.
11030
11031 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11032 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11033 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
11034 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11035 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11036 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
11037
11038 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11039 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11040 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
11041 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
11042 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
11043 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
11044 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11045 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11046 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11047 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11048 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11049 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
11050 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11051 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11052 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
11053 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
11054
11055 <blockquote><pre>
11056 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11057   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11058   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11059   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11060   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11061   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11062   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11063
11064 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11065   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11066   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
11067   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
11068   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
11069   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
11070 </pre></blockquote>
11071
11072 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
11073 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
11074 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
11075 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11076 also exist.</p>
11077
11078 <blockquote><pre>
11079 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11080 objectclass: top
11081 objectclass: dnsdomain
11082 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11083 dc: tjener
11084 arecord: 10.0.2.2
11085 associateddomain: tjener.intern
11086
11087 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11088 objectclass: top
11089 objectclass: dnsdomain2
11090 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11091 dc: 2
11092 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
11093 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
11094 </pre></blockquote>
11095
11096 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
11097 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11098 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11099 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11100 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11101 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11102 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
11103 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11104 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11105 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11106 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11107 instead.</p>
11108
11109 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11110 like this:</p>
11111
11112 <blockquote><pre>
11113 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11114   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11115   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11116   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11117   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11118   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11119
11120 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11121   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11122 </pre></blockquote>
11123
11124 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11125 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11126 reverse lookups.</p>
11127
11128 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11129 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11130 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
11131 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11132
11133 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11134 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
11135 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11136
11137 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11138 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11139 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
11140 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11141 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11142
11143 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11144 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11145 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11146 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11147 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11148
11149 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11150 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11151 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11152 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11153 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11154 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11155
11156 <blockquote><pre>
11157 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11158     SUP top
11159     AUXILIARY
11160     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11161           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11162           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11163           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11164           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11165     ))
11166 </pre></blockquote>
11167
11168 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11169 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11170 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11171 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11172 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11173 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11174
11175 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11176
11177 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11178 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
11179 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11180 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11181 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11182
11183 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11184 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11185 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
11186 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11187
11188 <blockquote><pre>
11189 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11190 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11191 </pre></blockquote>
11192
11193 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11194 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11195 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
11196 search result is this entry:</p>
11197
11198 <blockquote><pre>
11199 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11200 cn: dhcp
11201 objectClass: top
11202 objectClass: dhcpServer
11203 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11204 </pre></blockquote>
11205
11206 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11207 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
11208 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11209 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11210 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11211 The search result is this entry:</p>
11212
11213 <blockquote><pre>
11214 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11215 cn: DHCP Config
11216 objectClass: top
11217 objectClass: dhcpService
11218 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11219 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11220 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11221 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11222 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11223 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11224 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11225 </pre></blockquote>
11226
11227 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
11228 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11229 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11230 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11231 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
11232 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
11233 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11234 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11235 related computer objects.</p>
11236
11237 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11238 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11239 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11240 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11241 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
11242 like:</p>
11243
11244 <blockquote><pre>
11245 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11246 cn: hostname
11247 objectClass: top
11248 objectClass: dhcpHost
11249 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11250 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11251 </pre></blockquote>
11252
11253 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11254 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11255 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
11256 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11257 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
11258 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11259 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11260 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11261 structural object class.
11262
11263 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11264
11265 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11266 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11267 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11268 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11269 in the configuration.</p>
11270
11271 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11272 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11273 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11274 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11275 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11276 structure.</p>
11277
11278 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11279 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11280
11281 <blockquote><pre>
11282 ou=services
11283   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11284     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11285     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11286       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11287         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11288     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11289       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11290         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11291     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11292       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11293 </pre></blockquote>
11294
11295 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11296 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11297 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11298 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11299
11300 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11301 like this:</p>
11302
11303 <blockquote><pre>
11304 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11305 dc: hostname
11306 objectClass: top
11307 objectClass: dhcpHost
11308 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11309 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11310 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11311 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11312 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11313 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11314 </pre></blockquote>
11315
11316 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11317 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11318 auxiliary object class.</p>
11319
11320       </div>
11321       <div class="tags">
11322
11323
11324         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>.
11325
11326
11327       </div>
11328     </div>
11329     <div class="padding"></div>
11330
11331     <div class="entry">
11332       <div class="title">
11333         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
11334       </div>
11335       <div class="date">
11336         14th July 2010
11337       </div>
11338       <div class="body">
11339         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11340 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11341 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11342 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11343 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
11344
11345 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11346 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
11347
11348 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11349 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
11350 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11351 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11352 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11353 to a slave DNS server.</p>
11354
11355 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11356 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11357 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11358 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11359 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
11360 seem to work.</p>
11361
11362 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11363 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11364 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
11365 this:</p>
11366
11367 <blockquote><pre>
11368   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11369   cn: hostname
11370   objectClass: dhcphost
11371   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11372   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11373   associateddomain: hostname.intern
11374   arecord: 10.11.12.13
11375   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11376   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11377   ldapconfigsound: Y
11378 </pre></blockquote>
11379
11380 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11381 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11382 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
11383 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
11384
11385 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11386 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11387 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11388 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11389 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11390 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11391 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11392 might be a good place to put it.</p>
11393
11394 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11395 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11396
11397       </div>
11398       <div class="tags">
11399
11400
11401         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>.
11402
11403
11404       </div>
11405     </div>
11406     <div class="padding"></div>
11407
11408     <div class="entry">
11409       <div class="title">
11410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
11411       </div>
11412       <div class="date">
11413         11th July 2010
11414       </div>
11415       <div class="body">
11416         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
11417 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
11418 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
11419 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
11420
11421 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
11422 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
11423 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
11424 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
11425 LTSP clients.</p>
11426
11427 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
11428 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
11429 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
11430
11431 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
11432 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
11433 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
11434
11435 <blockquote><pre>
11436 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
11437 #
11438 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
11439 #
11440 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
11441 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
11442 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
11443 #
11444 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
11445 # existence of attribute names.
11446 #
11447 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
11448 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
11449 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
11450 #
11451 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
11452 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
11453 #
11454 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
11455 #     SUP top
11456 #     AUXILIARY
11457 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
11458
11459 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
11460 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
11461     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
11462     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
11463         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
11464         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
11465             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
11466             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
11467             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
11468             # bass value on to clients
11469             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
11470         done
11471     done
11472 fi
11473 </pre></blockquote>
11474
11475 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
11476 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
11477 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
11478 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
11479 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
11480
11481 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11482 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11483
11484 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
11485 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
11486 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
11487 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
11488 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
11489 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
11490
11491       </div>
11492       <div class="tags">
11493
11494
11495         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>.
11496
11497
11498       </div>
11499     </div>
11500     <div class="padding"></div>
11501
11502     <div class="entry">
11503       <div class="title">
11504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11505       </div>
11506       <div class="date">
11507          9th July 2010
11508       </div>
11509       <div class="body">
11510         <p>Since
11511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
11512 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
11513 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
11514 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
11515 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
11516 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
11517 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
11518 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
11519 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
11520 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
11521 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
11522 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
11523 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
11524
11525       </div>
11526       <div class="tags">
11527
11528
11529         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>.
11530
11531
11532       </div>
11533     </div>
11534     <div class="padding"></div>
11535
11536     <div class="entry">
11537       <div class="title">
11538         <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>
11539       </div>
11540       <div class="date">
11541          3rd July 2010
11542       </div>
11543       <div class="body">
11544         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
11545 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
11546 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
11547 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
11548 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
11549 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
11550 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
11551 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
11552
11553 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
11554 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
11555 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
11556 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
11557 publish the difference.</p>
11558
11559 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11560
11561 <blockquote><p>
11562   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11563   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
11564   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
11565   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11566   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
11567   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11568   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
11569   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
11570 </p></blockquote>
11571
11572 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11573
11574 <blockquote><p>
11575   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
11576   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
11577   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
11578   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
11579   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
11580   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
11581   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11582   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11583   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11584   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11585   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
11586   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
11587   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
11588   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
11589   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
11590   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11591   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
11592   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
11593   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
11594   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
11595 </p></blockquote>
11596
11597 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11598
11599 <blockquote><p>
11600   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
11601   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
11602   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11603   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11604   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
11605   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
11606   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
11607   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11608   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11609   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11610   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11611   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
11612   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
11613   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
11614   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
11615   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
11616   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
11617   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
11618   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
11619   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
11620   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
11621 </p></blockquote>
11622
11623 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11624
11625 <blockquote><p>
11626   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
11627   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
11628   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
11629 </p></blockquote>
11630
11631 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
11632 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
11633 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
11634 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
11635 the difference somewhat.
11636
11637       </div>
11638       <div class="tags">
11639
11640
11641         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>.
11642
11643
11644       </div>
11645     </div>
11646     <div class="padding"></div>
11647
11648     <div class="entry">
11649       <div class="title">
11650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
11651       </div>
11652       <div class="date">
11653          1st July 2010
11654       </div>
11655       <div class="body">
11656         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
11657 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
11658 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
11659 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
11660 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
11661 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
11662 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
11663 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
11664 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
11665
11666 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
11667
11668 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
11669 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
11670 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
11671 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
11672 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
11673 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
11674 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
11675 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
11676 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
11677 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
11678 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
11679 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
11680 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
11681 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
11682 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
11683
11684 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
11685
11686 <blockquote><pre>
11687 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
11688 </pre></blockquote>
11689
11690 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
11691 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
11692 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
11693 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
11694 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
11695 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
11696 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
11697 on how to get this working.</p>
11698
11699 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
11700 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
11701 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
11702 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
11703 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
11704 instructions I found in the
11705 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
11706 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
11707
11708 <blockquote><pre>
11709         debug-level             0
11710         reload-count            unlimited
11711         paranoia                no
11712
11713         enable-cache            passwd          yes
11714         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
11715         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
11716         suggested-size          passwd          211
11717         check-files             passwd          yes
11718         persistent              passwd          yes
11719         shared                  passwd          yes
11720         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
11721         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
11722
11723         enable-cache            group           yes
11724         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
11725         negative-time-to-live   group           20
11726         suggested-size          group           211
11727         check-files             group           yes
11728         persistent              group           yes
11729         shared                  group           yes
11730         max-db-size             group           33554432
11731         auto-propagate          group           yes
11732
11733         enable-cache            hosts           no
11734         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
11735         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
11736         suggested-size          hosts           211
11737         check-files             hosts           yes
11738         persistent              hosts           yes
11739         shared                  hosts           yes
11740         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
11741
11742         enable-cache            services        yes
11743         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
11744         negative-time-to-live   services        20
11745         suggested-size          services        211
11746         check-files             services        yes
11747         persistent              services        yes
11748         shared                  services        yes
11749         max-db-size             services        33554432
11750 </pre></blockquote>
11751
11752 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
11753 automatically like the one provided in
11754 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
11755 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
11756 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
11757 look like this:</p>
11758
11759 <blockquote><pre>
11760 passwd:         files ldap
11761 group:          files ldap
11762 shadow:         files ldap
11763 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
11764 networks:       files
11765 protocols:      files
11766 services:       files
11767 ethers:         files
11768 rpc:            files
11769 netgroup:       files ldap
11770 </pre></blockquote>
11771
11772 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
11773 shadow and netgroup.</p>
11774
11775 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
11776 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
11777 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
11778 attributes cached.
11779
11780 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
11781   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
11782
11783 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
11784 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
11785 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
11786 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
11787 discovered sssd.</p>
11788
11789 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
11790
11791 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
11792 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
11793 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
11794 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
11795 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
11796 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
11797 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
11798 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
11799 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
11800 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
11801 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
11802 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
11803 version 1.2 is now in testing.
11804
11805 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
11806 roaming setup I want</p>
11807
11808 <blockquote><pre>
11809 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
11810 </pre></blockquote>
11811
11812 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
11813 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
11814
11815 <blockquote><pre>
11816 [sssd]
11817 config_file_version = 2
11818 reconnection_retries = 3
11819 sbus_timeout = 30
11820 services = nss, pam
11821 domains = INTERN
11822
11823 [nss]
11824 filter_groups = root
11825 filter_users = root
11826 reconnection_retries = 3
11827
11828 [pam]
11829 reconnection_retries = 3
11830
11831 [domain/INTERN]
11832 enumerate = false
11833 cache_credentials = true
11834
11835 id_provider = ldap
11836 auth_provider = ldap
11837 chpass_provider = ldap
11838
11839 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
11840 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11841 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
11842 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
11843 </pre></blockquote>
11844
11845 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
11846 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
11847
11848 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
11849 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
11850 modify it manually.</p>
11851
11852 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11853 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11854
11855       </div>
11856       <div class="tags">
11857
11858
11859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11860
11861
11862       </div>
11863     </div>
11864     <div class="padding"></div>
11865
11866     <div class="entry">
11867       <div class="title">
11868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11869       </div>
11870       <div class="date">
11871         28th June 2010
11872       </div>
11873       <div class="body">
11874         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11875 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11876 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
11877 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11878 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
11879 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11880 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
11881 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11882 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
11883 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
11884
11885 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11886 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11887 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11888 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11889 released.</p>
11890
11891 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
11892 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11893 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
11894 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
11895
11896 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11897 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11898
11899 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11900 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
11901 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11902 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
11903 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
11904
11905       </div>
11906       <div class="tags">
11907
11908
11909         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>.
11910
11911
11912       </div>
11913     </div>
11914     <div class="padding"></div>
11915
11916     <div class="entry">
11917       <div class="title">
11918         <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>
11919       </div>
11920       <div class="date">
11921         24th June 2010
11922       </div>
11923       <div class="body">
11924         <p>A while back, I
11925 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
11926 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
11927 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
11928 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
11929
11930 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
11931 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
11932 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
11933 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
11934
11935 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
11936 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
11937 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
11938 Debian Edu.</p>
11939
11940 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
11941 the
11942 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
11943 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
11944 available today from IETF.</p>
11945
11946 <pre>
11947 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
11948 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
11949 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
11950  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11951         NAME 'dhcpHost'
11952         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11953 -       SUP top
11954 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
11955         MUST cn
11956         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11957         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11958 </pre>
11959
11960 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11961 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11962 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
11963
11964 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11965 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11966
11967       </div>
11968       <div class="tags">
11969
11970
11971         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>.
11972
11973
11974       </div>
11975     </div>
11976     <div class="padding"></div>
11977
11978     <div class="entry">
11979       <div class="title">
11980         <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>
11981       </div>
11982       <div class="date">
11983         16th June 2010
11984       </div>
11985       <div class="body">
11986         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11987 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
11988 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11989 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11990 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11991 this:
11992
11993 <blockquote><pre>
11994 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11995 tasksel --new-install
11996 </pre></blockquote>
11997
11998 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11999 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12000 any output what so ever.
12001
12002 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12003 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12004 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12005 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12006 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12007 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
12008 code like this:
12009
12010 <blockquote><pre>
12011 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12012 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
12013 $cmd
12014 </pre></blockquote>
12015
12016 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
12017 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12018 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12019 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12020 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12021 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12022 installation.</p>
12023
12024 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12025 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12026 like this.</p>
12027
12028       </div>
12029       <div class="tags">
12030
12031
12032         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>.
12033
12034
12035       </div>
12036     </div>
12037     <div class="padding"></div>
12038
12039     <div class="entry">
12040       <div class="title">
12041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
12042       </div>
12043       <div class="date">
12044         13th June 2010
12045       </div>
12046       <div class="body">
12047         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
12048 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
12049 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
12050 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
12051 pages.</p>
12052
12053 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
12054 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
12055 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
12056 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
12057 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
12058 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
12059 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
12060 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
12061 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
12062 see how the project is doing.</p>
12063
12064 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
12065 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
12066 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
12067 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
12068 Windows.  This is great.</p>
12069
12070       </div>
12071       <div class="tags">
12072
12073
12074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12075
12076
12077       </div>
12078     </div>
12079     <div class="padding"></div>
12080
12081     <div class="entry">
12082       <div class="title">
12083         <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>
12084       </div>
12085       <div class="date">
12086         13th June 2010
12087       </div>
12088       <div class="body">
12089         <p>My
12090 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
12091 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
12092 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
12094 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12095 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
12096 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
12097
12098 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12099 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
12100 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12101 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12102 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12103 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12104 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12105 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
12106
12107 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
12108 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
12109 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
12110 too surprising.</p>
12111
12112 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
12113 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
12114 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
12115 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
12116 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
12117 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
12118 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
12119 continue.</p>
12120
12121 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
12122 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
12123   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
12124   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
12125   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
12126   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
12127   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
12128   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12129   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12130   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12131   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12132   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12133   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12134   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12135   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12136   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12137   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12138   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12139   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12140   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12141   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12142   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12143   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12144   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12145   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12146   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12147   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12148   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12149   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
12150   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
12151
12152 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
12153
12154 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
12155   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
12156   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
12157   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
12158   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12159   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
12160   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
12161   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
12162   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
12163   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
12164   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12165   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
12166   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12167   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
12168   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
12169   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
12170   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
12171   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
12172   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
12173   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
12174   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
12175   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
12176   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
12177   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
12178   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12179   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
12180   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
12181   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
12182   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
12183   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12184   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12185   zip</p>
12186
12187 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
12188
12189 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
12190   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
12191   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
12192   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
12193   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
12194   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
12195   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12196   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12197   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12198   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12199   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12200   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12201   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12202   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12203   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12204   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12205   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12206   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12207   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12208   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12209   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12210   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12211   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12212   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12213   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12214   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12215   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12216   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
12217
12218 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
12219 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
12220   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12221   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
12222   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
12223   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12224   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
12225   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
12226   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12227   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
12228   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
12229   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
12230   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
12231   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
12232   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
12233   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
12234   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
12235   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12236   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12237   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12238   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
12239   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12240   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
12241   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
12242   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12243   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12244   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
12245   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
12246   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
12247   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
12248   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
12249   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
12250   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
12251   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
12252   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
12253   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12254   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12255   xulrunner-1.9</p>
12256
12257
12258       </div>
12259       <div class="tags">
12260
12261
12262         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>.
12263
12264
12265       </div>
12266     </div>
12267     <div class="padding"></div>
12268
12269     <div class="entry">
12270       <div class="title">
12271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
12272       </div>
12273       <div class="date">
12274         11th June 2010
12275       </div>
12276       <div class="body">
12277         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
12278 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
12279 have been discovered and reported in the process
12280 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
12281 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12282 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
12283 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12284 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12285
12286 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12287 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12288 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12289 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12290 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12291 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12292
12293 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12294 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12295 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12296 is created.  The bug report
12297 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12298 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12299 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
12300 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12301 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
12302 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
12303 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12304 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12305 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
12306 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12307 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12308 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12309 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12310
12311 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
12312 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12313 trick:</p>
12314
12315 <blockquote><pre>
12316 #!/bin/sh
12317 set -ex
12318
12319 if [ "$1" ] ; then
12320     desktop=$1
12321 else
12322     desktop=gnome
12323 fi
12324
12325 from=lenny
12326 to=squeeze
12327
12328 exec &lt; /dev/null
12329 unset LANG
12330 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
12331 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
12332 fuser -mv .
12333 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
12334 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12335 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
12336 #!/bin/sh
12337 exit 101
12338 EOF
12339 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
12340 exit_cleanup() {
12341     umount $tmpdir/proc
12342 }
12343 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
12344 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
12345 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
12346
12347 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
12348
12349 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
12350 # to return the correct answers.
12351 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
12352     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
12353
12354 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12355 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12356     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
12357 #!/bin/sh
12358 exit 2
12359 EOF
12360     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12361 done
12362
12363 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12364 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12365 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12366 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12367
12368 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12369 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12370 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12371 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12372 fuser -mv
12373 </pre></blockquote>
12374
12375 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12376 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12377 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12378 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
12379 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12380 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
12381
12382 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12383 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12384 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
12385 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
12386 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12387 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
12388 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
12389
12390 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12391 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12392 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12393 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12394 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12395 packages.</p>
12396
12397       </div>
12398       <div class="tags">
12399
12400
12401         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>.
12402
12403
12404       </div>
12405     </div>
12406     <div class="padding"></div>
12407
12408     <div class="entry">
12409       <div class="title">
12410         <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>
12411       </div>
12412       <div class="date">
12413          6th June 2010
12414       </div>
12415       <div class="body">
12416         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12417 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12418 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
12419 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12420 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
12421 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12422 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
12423
12424 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12425 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12426 COLUMNS):</p>
12427
12428 <blockquote><pre>
12429 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
12430 previous=N
12431 PREVLEVEL=
12432 RUNLEVEL=
12433 runlevel=S
12434 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12435 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
12436 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12437 </pre></blockquote>
12438
12439 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12440 script.</p>
12441
12442 <blockquote><pre>
12443 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
12444 previous=N
12445 PREVLEVEL=N
12446 RUNLEVEL=S
12447 runlevel=S
12448 </pre></blockquote>
12449
12450 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12451 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
12452 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
12453
12454 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12455 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12456 choice.</p>
12457
12458       </div>
12459       <div class="tags">
12460
12461
12462         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>.
12463
12464
12465       </div>
12466     </div>
12467     <div class="padding"></div>
12468
12469     <div class="entry">
12470       <div class="title">
12471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
12472       </div>
12473       <div class="date">
12474          6th June 2010
12475       </div>
12476       <div class="body">
12477         <p>Via the
12478 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12479 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12480 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12481 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
12482 following the standards wars of today.</p>
12483
12484       </div>
12485       <div class="tags">
12486
12487
12488         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>.
12489
12490
12491       </div>
12492     </div>
12493     <div class="padding"></div>
12494
12495     <div class="entry">
12496       <div class="title">
12497         <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>
12498       </div>
12499       <div class="date">
12500          3rd June 2010
12501       </div>
12502       <div class="body">
12503         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12504 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12505 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
12506 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12507 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
12508
12509 <blockquote><pre>
12510 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12511   vendor                    count
12512   Dell Computer Corporation     1
12513     PowerEdge 1750              1
12514   IBM                           1
12515     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
12516   Intel                         2
12517   [no-dmi-info]                 3
12518 maintainer:~#
12519 </pre></blockquote>
12520
12521 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12522 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
12523 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12524 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
12525 option to list the individual machines.</p>
12526
12527 <p>A larger list is
12528 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12529 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12530 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
12531 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12532 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12533 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12534 collector.</p>
12535
12536       </div>
12537       <div class="tags">
12538
12539
12540         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>.
12541
12542
12543       </div>
12544     </div>
12545     <div class="padding"></div>
12546
12547     <div class="entry">
12548       <div class="title">
12549         <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>
12550       </div>
12551       <div class="date">
12552          1st June 2010
12553       </div>
12554       <div class="body">
12555         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12556 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
12557 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12558 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12559 wait.</p>
12560
12561 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12562 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
12563 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12564 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12565 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
12566 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
12567
12568 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12569 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12570 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
12571 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12572 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12573 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12574 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
12575 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
12576
12577 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
12578
12579       </div>
12580       <div class="tags">
12581
12582
12583         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>.
12584
12585
12586       </div>
12587     </div>
12588     <div class="padding"></div>
12589
12590     <div class="entry">
12591       <div class="title">
12592         <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>
12593       </div>
12594       <div class="date">
12595         27th May 2010
12596       </div>
12597       <div class="body">
12598         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12599 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12600 issues are known and should be solved:
12601
12602 <p><ul>
12603
12604 <li>The wicd package seen to
12605 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
12606 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
12607 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12608 seem to be on the case.</li>
12609
12610 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12611 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
12612 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
12613 maintainer is on the case.</li>
12614
12615 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12616 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12617 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
12618 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12619 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12620 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12621 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12622 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
12623
12624 </ul></p>
12625
12626 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12627 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
12628 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12629 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
12630
12631 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12632 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12633 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12634 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12635
12636 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
12637
12638       </div>
12639       <div class="tags">
12640
12641
12642         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>.
12643
12644
12645       </div>
12646     </div>
12647     <div class="padding"></div>
12648
12649     <div class="entry">
12650       <div class="title">
12651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
12652       </div>
12653       <div class="date">
12654         22nd May 2010
12655       </div>
12656       <div class="body">
12657         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12658 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
12659 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12660 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
12661
12662 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
12663 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12664 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
12665 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12666 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12667 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12668 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
12669 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12670 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
12671 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12672 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12673 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
12674 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
12675 going to work.</p>
12676
12677 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
12678 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
12679 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
12680 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
12681 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
12682 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
12683 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
12684 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
12685 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
12686 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
12687 Edu.</p>
12688
12689 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
12690 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
12691 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
12692 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
12693 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
12694 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
12695
12696 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
12697 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
12698
12699       </div>
12700       <div class="tags">
12701
12702
12703         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>.
12704
12705
12706       </div>
12707     </div>
12708     <div class="padding"></div>
12709
12710     <div class="entry">
12711       <div class="title">
12712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
12713       </div>
12714       <div class="date">
12715         19th May 2010
12716       </div>
12717       <div class="body">
12718         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
12719 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
12720 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
12721 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
12722 into unstable.  The
12723 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
12724 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
12725 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
12726 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
12727 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
12728 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
12729 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
12730
12731 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
12732 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
12733 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
12734 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
12735 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
12736 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
12737 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
12738 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
12739
12740 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
12741 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
12742 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
12743 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
12744 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
12745 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
12746 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
12747
12748 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
12749 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
12750 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
12751 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
12752 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
12753 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
12754 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
12755 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
12756 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
12757 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
12758 on the home directory servers.</p>
12759
12760 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
12761 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
12762 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
12763 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
12764 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
12765 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
12766
12767 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12768 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12769
12770       </div>
12771       <div class="tags">
12772
12773
12774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12775
12776
12777       </div>
12778     </div>
12779     <div class="padding"></div>
12780
12781     <div class="entry">
12782       <div class="title">
12783         <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>
12784       </div>
12785       <div class="date">
12786         14th May 2010
12787       </div>
12788       <div class="body">
12789         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12790 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12791 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12792 expected, if I am to believe the
12793 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12794 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12795 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12796 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
12797 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12798 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12799 version.</p>
12800
12801 More information about
12802 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12803 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
12804 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12805 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12806
12807 <blockquote><pre>
12808 CONCURRENCY=none
12809 </pre></blockquote>
12810
12811 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12812 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12813 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12814 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12815
12816       </div>
12817       <div class="tags">
12818
12819
12820         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>.
12821
12822
12823       </div>
12824     </div>
12825     <div class="padding"></div>
12826
12827     <div class="entry">
12828       <div class="title">
12829         <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>
12830       </div>
12831       <div class="date">
12832         14th May 2010
12833       </div>
12834       <div class="body">
12835         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12836 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12837 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12838 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12839 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
12840 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12841 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
12842 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
12843
12844 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12845 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
12846 this on the collector host:</p>
12847
12848 <blockquote><pre>
12849 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12850 </pre></blockquote>
12851
12852 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12853 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
12854
12855 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12856 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12857 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12858 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
12859 written yet.</p>
12860
12861       </div>
12862       <div class="tags">
12863
12864
12865         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>.
12866
12867
12868       </div>
12869     </div>
12870     <div class="padding"></div>
12871
12872     <div class="entry">
12873       <div class="title">
12874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
12875       </div>
12876       <div class="date">
12877         13th May 2010
12878       </div>
12879       <div class="body">
12880         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12881 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
12882 has been
12883 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
12884
12885 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
12886 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12887 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
12888 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12889 based boot system.  Tollef is
12890 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
12891 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
12892 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12893 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12894 at the moment do not.</p>
12895
12896 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12897 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12898 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
12899 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12900 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12901 way forward.</p>
12902
12903 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12904 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12905 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12906 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12907 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12908 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
12909 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12910 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12911 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
12912
12913       </div>
12914       <div class="tags">
12915
12916
12917         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>.
12918
12919
12920       </div>
12921     </div>
12922     <div class="padding"></div>
12923
12924     <div class="entry">
12925       <div class="title">
12926         <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>
12927       </div>
12928       <div class="date">
12929          6th May 2010
12930       </div>
12931       <div class="body">
12932         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12933 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12934 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
12935 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12936 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12937 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12938 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12939
12940 <blockquote><pre>
12941 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12942 </pre></blockquote>
12943
12944 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12945 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12946 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12947 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
12948 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12949 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12950 make this happen.</p>
12951
12952 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
12953 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12954 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12955 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
12956 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
12957
12958 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12959 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
12960 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
12961 fix the remaining issues.</p>
12962
12963 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12964 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12965 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12966 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12967
12968       </div>
12969       <div class="tags">
12970
12971
12972         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>.
12973
12974
12975       </div>
12976     </div>
12977     <div class="padding"></div>
12978
12979     <div class="entry">
12980       <div class="title">
12981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
12982       </div>
12983       <div class="date">
12984          2nd May 2010
12985       </div>
12986       <div class="body">
12987         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
12988 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
12989 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
12990
12991 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
12992 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
12993 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
12994 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
12995 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
12996
12997 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
12998 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
12999
13000 <blockquote><pre>
13001 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13002 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
13003 Password expires                                        : never
13004 Password inactive                                       : never
13005 Account expires                                         : never
13006 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
13007 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
13008 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
13009 root@tjener:~#
13010 </pre></blockquote>
13011
13012 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
13013 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
13014 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
13015 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
13016 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
13017 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
13018
13019 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
13020 intended:</p>
13021
13022 <blockquote><pre>
13023 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
13024 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13025 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
13026 Password expires                                        : never
13027 Password inactive                                       : never
13028 Account expires                                         : never
13029 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
13030 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
13031 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
13032 root@tjener:~#
13033 </pre></blockquote>
13034
13035 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
13036 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
13037 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
13038
13039 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
13040 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
13041
13042 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
13043 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13044
13045 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
13046 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
13047 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
13048 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
13049 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
13050 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
13051 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
13052
13053 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
13054 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
13055 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
13056 change.</p>
13057
13058       </div>
13059       <div class="tags">
13060
13061
13062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13063
13064
13065       </div>
13066     </div>
13067     <div class="padding"></div>
13068
13069     <div class="entry">
13070       <div class="title">
13071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
13072       </div>
13073       <div class="date">
13074         28th April 2010
13075       </div>
13076       <div class="body">
13077         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
13078 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
13079 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
13080 and go.</p>
13081
13082 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
13083 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
13084 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
13085 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
13086
13087 <ul>
13088
13089  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
13090    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
13091    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
13092    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
13093    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
13094    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
13095    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
13096    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
13097    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
13098    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
13099    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
13100    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
13101
13102  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
13103    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
13104    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
13105    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
13106    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
13107    or the Fedora developed
13108    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
13109    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
13110
13111  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
13112    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
13113    directory, using unison.</li>
13114
13115  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
13116    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
13117    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
13118    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
13119    implemented.</li>
13120
13121  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
13122    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
13123
13124  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
13125    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
13126    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
13127
13128 </ul>
13129
13130 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
13131 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
13132 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
13133 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
13134 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
13135 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
13136 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
13137 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
13138 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
13139
13140 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13141 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13142
13143       </div>
13144       <div class="tags">
13145
13146
13147         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13148
13149
13150       </div>
13151     </div>
13152     <div class="padding"></div>
13153
13154     <div class="entry">
13155       <div class="title">
13156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
13157       </div>
13158       <div class="date">
13159         19th April 2010
13160       </div>
13161       <div class="body">
13162         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
13163 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
13164 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
13165 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
13166 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
13167 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
13168 restrictions on the web, for example from
13169 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
13170 epub-version from
13171 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
13172 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
13173 strongly recommend this book.</p>
13174
13175       </div>
13176       <div class="tags">
13177
13178
13179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13180
13181
13182       </div>
13183     </div>
13184     <div class="padding"></div>
13185
13186     <div class="entry">
13187       <div class="title">
13188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
13189       </div>
13190       <div class="date">
13191         14th April 2010
13192       </div>
13193       <div class="body">
13194         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
13195 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
13196 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
13197 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
13198 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
13199 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
13200 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
13201 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
13202 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
13203
13204 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
13205 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
13206 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
13207 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
13208 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
13209
13210 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
13211 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
13212
13213 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
13214 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
13215 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
13216 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
13217 to work properly.</p>
13218
13219 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
13220 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
13221 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
13222 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
13223 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
13224 time.</p>
13225
13226 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
13227 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
13228 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
13229 up in a few days.</p>
13230
13231       </div>
13232       <div class="tags">
13233
13234
13235         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13236
13237
13238       </div>
13239     </div>
13240     <div class="padding"></div>
13241
13242     <div class="entry">
13243       <div class="title">
13244         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
13245       </div>
13246       <div class="date">
13247          6th March 2010
13248       </div>
13249       <div class="body">
13250         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
13251 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
13252 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
13253 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
13254 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
13255 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
13256
13257 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
13258 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
13259 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
13260 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
13261
13262 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
13263 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
13264 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
13265 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
13266 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
13267 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
13268
13269       </div>
13270       <div class="tags">
13271
13272
13273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13274
13275
13276       </div>
13277     </div>
13278     <div class="padding"></div>
13279
13280     <div class="entry">
13281       <div class="title">
13282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
13283       </div>
13284       <div class="date">
13285         11th February 2010
13286       </div>
13287       <div class="body">
13288         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
13289 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
13290 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
13291 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
13292 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
13293 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
13294 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
13295
13296 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
13297
13298 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
13299 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
13300 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
13301 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
13302
13303       </div>
13304       <div class="tags">
13305
13306
13307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13308
13309
13310       </div>
13311     </div>
13312     <div class="padding"></div>
13313
13314     <div class="entry">
13315       <div class="title">
13316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
13317       </div>
13318       <div class="date">
13319         27th January 2010
13320       </div>
13321       <div class="body">
13322         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
13323 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
13324 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
13325 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
13326 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
13327 further.</p>
13328
13329 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
13330 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
13331 configured to be a server for the
13332 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
13333 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
13334 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
13335 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
13336 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
13337 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
13338 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
13339 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
13340 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
13341 and Nagios configuration.</p>
13342
13343 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
13344 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
13345 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
13346 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
13347
13348 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
13349 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
13350 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
13351 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
13352 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
13353 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
13354 the machine.</p>
13355
13356 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
13357 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
13358 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
13359 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
13360
13361 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
13362 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
13363 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
13364 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
13365 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
13366 everything is taken care of.</p>
13367
13368       </div>
13369       <div class="tags">
13370
13371
13372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13373
13374
13375       </div>
13376     </div>
13377     <div class="padding"></div>
13378
13379     <div class="entry">
13380       <div class="title">
13381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
13382       </div>
13383       <div class="date">
13384         12th August 2009
13385       </div>
13386       <div class="body">
13387         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
13388 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
13389 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
13390 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
13391
13392 <table>
13393 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13394 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
13395 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
13396 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
13397 </table>
13398
13399 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
13400 got these numbers:</p>
13401
13402 <table>
13403 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13404 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
13405 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
13406 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
13407 </table>
13408
13409 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
13410
13411 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
13412 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
13413 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
13414 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
13415 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
13416
13417
13418 <table>
13419 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13420 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
13421 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
13422 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
13423 </table>
13424
13425 <p>And with 'site:no':
13426
13427 <table>
13428 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13429 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
13430 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
13431 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
13432 </table>
13433
13434 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
13435 numbers.</p>
13436
13437       </div>
13438       <div class="tags">
13439
13440
13441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13442
13443
13444       </div>
13445     </div>
13446     <div class="padding"></div>
13447
13448     <div class="entry">
13449       <div class="title">
13450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
13451       </div>
13452       <div class="date">
13453          8th August 2009
13454       </div>
13455       <div class="body">
13456         <p>According to <a
13457 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
13458 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
13459 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
13460 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
13461 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
13462 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
13463 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
13464 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
13465 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
13466 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
13467
13468 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
13469 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
13470 seminar this autumn.</p>
13471
13472       </div>
13473       <div class="tags">
13474
13475
13476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13477
13478
13479       </div>
13480     </div>
13481     <div class="padding"></div>
13482
13483     <div class="entry">
13484       <div class="title">
13485         <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>
13486       </div>
13487       <div class="date">
13488         27th July 2009
13489       </div>
13490       <div class="body">
13491         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
13492 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
13493 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
13494 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
13495 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
13496 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
13497 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
13498
13499 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
13500 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
13501 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
13502
13503       </div>
13504       <div class="tags">
13505
13506
13507         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>.
13508
13509
13510       </div>
13511     </div>
13512     <div class="padding"></div>
13513
13514     <div class="entry">
13515       <div class="title">
13516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
13517       </div>
13518       <div class="date">
13519         22nd July 2009
13520       </div>
13521       <div class="body">
13522         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
13523 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
13524 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
13525 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
13526 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
13527 the package up to date.</p>
13528
13529 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
13530 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
13531 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
13532 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
13533 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
13534 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
13535 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
13536 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
13537 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
13538 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
13539 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
13540 working on the future release.</p>
13541
13542 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
13543 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
13544
13545       </div>
13546       <div class="tags">
13547
13548
13549         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>.
13550
13551
13552       </div>
13553     </div>
13554     <div class="padding"></div>
13555
13556     <div class="entry">
13557       <div class="title">
13558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
13559       </div>
13560       <div class="date">
13561         24th June 2009
13562       </div>
13563       <div class="body">
13564         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
13565 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
13566 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
13567 funded
13568 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
13569 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
13570 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
13571 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
13572 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
13573 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
13574
13575 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
13576 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
13577 boot:</p>
13578
13579 <ul>
13580
13581 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
13582
13583 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
13584    clock is in UTC.</li>
13585
13586 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
13587    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13588    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
13589
13590 </ul>
13591
13592 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
13593 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
13594 Villegas</a>.
13595
13596 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
13597 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
13598 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
13599 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
13600 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
13601 using this.</p>
13602
13603 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
13604 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
13605 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
13606 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
13607 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
13608 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
13609 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
13610
13611       </div>
13612       <div class="tags">
13613
13614
13615         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>.
13616
13617
13618       </div>
13619     </div>
13620     <div class="padding"></div>
13621
13622     <div class="entry">
13623       <div class="title">
13624         <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>
13625       </div>
13626       <div class="date">
13627          2nd May 2009
13628       </div>
13629       <div class="body">
13630         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
13631 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
13632 do not yet know them.</p>
13633
13634 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
13635 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
13636 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
13637 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
13638 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
13639 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
13640 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
13641 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
13642 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
13643 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
13644 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
13645
13646 <p>The second one is
13647 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
13648 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
13649 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
13650 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
13651 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
13652 and the company behind it is running
13653 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
13654 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
13655 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
13656 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
13657 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
13658 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
13659 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
13660 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
13661
13662 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
13663 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
13664 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
13665 surrounded by today.</p>
13666
13667       </div>
13668       <div class="tags">
13669
13670
13671         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>.
13672
13673
13674       </div>
13675     </div>
13676     <div class="padding"></div>
13677
13678     <div class="entry">
13679       <div class="title">
13680         <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>
13681       </div>
13682       <div class="date">
13683         28th April 2009
13684       </div>
13685       <div class="body">
13686         <p>Julien Blache
13687 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
13688 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
13689 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
13690 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
13691 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
13692 properties.</p>
13693
13694       </div>
13695       <div class="tags">
13696
13697
13698         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>.
13699
13700
13701       </div>
13702     </div>
13703     <div class="padding"></div>
13704
13705     <div class="entry">
13706       <div class="title">
13707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
13708       </div>
13709       <div class="date">
13710          5th April 2009
13711       </div>
13712       <div class="body">
13713         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
13714 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
13715 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
13716 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
13717 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
13718 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
13719 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
13720 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
13721
13722 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
13723 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
13724 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
13725   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
13726   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
13727
13728 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
13729 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
13730 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
13731 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
13732
13733 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
13734 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
13735 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
13736 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
13737
13738 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
13739 set -e
13740 URL="$1"
13741 SAVEFILE="$2"
13742 DURATION="$3"
13743 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
13744   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
13745   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
13746 pid=$!
13747 sleep $DURATION
13748 kill $pid
13749 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
13750
13751       </div>
13752       <div class="tags">
13753
13754
13755         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13756
13757
13758       </div>
13759     </div>
13760     <div class="padding"></div>
13761
13762     <div class="entry">
13763       <div class="title">
13764         <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>
13765       </div>
13766       <div class="date">
13767         30th March 2009
13768       </div>
13769       <div class="body">
13770         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
13771 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
13772 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
13773 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
13774 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
13775 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
13776 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
13777 application.</p>
13778
13779 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
13780 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
13781 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
13782 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
13783 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
13784 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
13785 blocked from doing so.</p>
13786
13787 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
13788 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
13789 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13790 requirements change.</p>
13791
13792 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13793 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13794 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
13795
13796       </div>
13797       <div class="tags">
13798
13799
13800         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>.
13801
13802
13803       </div>
13804     </div>
13805     <div class="padding"></div>
13806
13807     <div class="entry">
13808       <div class="title">
13809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13810       </div>
13811       <div class="date">
13812         29th March 2009
13813       </div>
13814       <div class="body">
13815         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13816 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13817 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13818 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13819 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13820 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13821 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13822 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13823 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13824 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13825 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13826 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13827 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
13828 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
13829 now. :)</p>
13830
13831       </div>
13832       <div class="tags">
13833
13834
13835         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>.
13836
13837
13838       </div>
13839     </div>
13840     <div class="padding"></div>
13841
13842     <div class="entry">
13843       <div class="title">
13844         <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>
13845       </div>
13846       <div class="date">
13847         29th March 2009
13848       </div>
13849       <div class="body">
13850         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13851 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13852 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
13853 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
13854 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13855 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
13856
13857 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
13858 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13859 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13860 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
13861 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13862 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13863 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13864 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13865 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13866 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13867 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13868 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13869 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13870
13871 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13872 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13873 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13874 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13875
13876 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13877 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13878
13879 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13880 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13881 new IETF work group?</p>
13882
13883       </div>
13884       <div class="tags">
13885
13886
13887         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>.
13888
13889
13890       </div>
13891     </div>
13892     <div class="padding"></div>
13893
13894     <div class="entry">
13895       <div class="title">
13896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
13897       </div>
13898       <div class="date">
13899         28th February 2009
13900       </div>
13901       <div class="body">
13902         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
13903 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
13904 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
13905 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
13906 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
13907 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
13908 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
13909 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
13910 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
13911 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
13912 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
13913 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
13914 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
13915 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
13916 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
13917 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
13918 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
13919 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
13920 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
13921 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
13922 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
13923 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
13924 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
13925 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
13926 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
13927 machine.</p>
13928
13929 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
13930 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
13931 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
13932 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
13933 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
13934 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
13935 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
13936
13937 <pre>
13938 use LWP::Simple;
13939 use POSIX;
13940 use WWW::Mechanize;
13941 use Date::Parse;
13942 [...]
13943 sub get_support_info {
13944     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
13945     my $str;
13946
13947     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
13948         # fetch website from Dell support
13949         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
13950         my $webpage = get($url);
13951         return undef unless ($webpage);
13952
13953         my $daysleft = -1;
13954         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
13955         foreach my $line (@lines) {
13956             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
13957             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13958             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
13959
13960             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
13961             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
13962             my $lastend = "";
13963             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
13964                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
13965
13966                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13967                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13968                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13969                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
13970                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
13971                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
13972                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
13973             }
13974             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13975             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13976                 if ($lastend lt $today);
13977         }
13978     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
13979         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
13980         my $url =
13981             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
13982         $mech->get($url);
13983         my $fields = {
13984             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
13985             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
13986             'country' => 'NO',
13987             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
13988             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
13989         };
13990         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
13991                             fields      => $fields );
13992         # Next step is screen scraping
13993         my $content = $mech->content();
13994
13995         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13996         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13997         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13998         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13999
14000         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14001
14002         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
14003             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
14004                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
14005             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
14006             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14007                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14008             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14009                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
14010
14011             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
14012
14013             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14014                 if ($end lt $today);
14015         }
14016     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
14017         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
14018         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
14019         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
14020             my $content =
14021                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
14022             if ($content) {
14023                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14024                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14025                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14026                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14027
14028                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
14029                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
14030
14031                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
14032
14033                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14034                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14035                     if ($end lt $today);
14036             }
14037         }
14038     }
14039     return $str;
14040 }
14041 </pre>
14042
14043 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
14044 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
14045 from dmidecode.</p>
14046
14047 <pre>
14048 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
14049                        "447707-B21");
14050 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
14051 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
14052                        "1234567");
14053 </pre>
14054
14055 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
14056 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
14057
14058 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
14059 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
14060 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
14061 do so.</p>
14062
14063       </div>
14064       <div class="tags">
14065
14066
14067         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14068
14069
14070       </div>
14071     </div>
14072     <div class="padding"></div>
14073
14074     <div class="entry">
14075       <div class="title">
14076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
14077       </div>
14078       <div class="date">
14079         20th February 2009
14080       </div>
14081       <div class="body">
14082         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
14083 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
14084 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
14085 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
14086 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
14087 the "missing" computer.</p>
14088
14089 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
14090 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
14091 code blocks as defined in the
14092 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
14093 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
14094 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
14095 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
14096 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
14097 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
14098 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
14099 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
14100 codes.</p>
14101
14102 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
14103 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
14104 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
14105 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
14106 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
14107 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
14108
14109 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
14110 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
14111 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
14112 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
14113 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
14114 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
14115 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
14116 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
14117 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
14118 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
14119
14120 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
14121 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
14122 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
14123
14124       </div>
14125       <div class="tags">
14126
14127
14128         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14129
14130
14131       </div>
14132     </div>
14133     <div class="padding"></div>
14134
14135     <div class="entry">
14136       <div class="title">
14137         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
14138       </div>
14139       <div class="date">
14140         17th January 2009
14141       </div>
14142       <div class="body">
14143         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
14144 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
14145 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
14146 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
14147 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
14148 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
14149 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
14150 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
14151 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
14152 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
14153 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
14154 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
14155 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
14156 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
14157
14158 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
14159 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
14160 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
14161 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
14162 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
14163 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
14164 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
14165 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
14166 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
14167 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
14168 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
14169 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
14170 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
14171 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
14172 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
14173 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
14174 playing when the download is done.</p>
14175
14176 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
14177 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
14178 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
14179 too.</p>
14180
14181 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
14182 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
14183 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
14184 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
14185
14186       </div>
14187       <div class="tags">
14188
14189
14190         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14191
14192
14193       </div>
14194     </div>
14195     <div class="padding"></div>
14196
14197     <div class="entry">
14198       <div class="title">
14199         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
14200       </div>
14201       <div class="date">
14202         28th December 2008
14203       </div>
14204       <div class="body">
14205         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
14206 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
14207 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
14208 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
14209 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
14210 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
14211 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
14212 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
14213 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
14214 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
14215 source, sink and mixer applications and
14216 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
14217 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
14218 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
14219 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
14220 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
14221 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
14222 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
14223 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
14224 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
14225
14226 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
14227 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
14228 larger stick as well.</p>
14229
14230       </div>
14231       <div class="tags">
14232
14233
14234         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14235
14236
14237       </div>
14238     </div>
14239     <div class="padding"></div>
14240
14241     <div class="entry">
14242       <div class="title">
14243         <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>
14244       </div>
14245       <div class="date">
14246          7th December 2008
14247       </div>
14248       <div class="body">
14249         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14250 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14251 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14252 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14253 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14254 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
14255 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14256 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
14257
14258 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14259 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14260 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14261 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14262 of these cards.</p>
14263
14264       </div>
14265       <div class="tags">
14266
14267
14268         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>.
14269
14270
14271       </div>
14272     </div>
14273     <div class="padding"></div>
14274
14275     <div class="entry">
14276       <div class="title">
14277         <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>
14278       </div>
14279       <div class="date">
14280         25th November 2008
14281       </div>
14282       <div class="body">
14283         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14284 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14285 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14286 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14287 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
14288 notes are available on
14289 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14290 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14291 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14292 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
14293 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14294 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
14295 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14296 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
14297 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
14298
14299 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
14300 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
14301
14302       </div>
14303       <div class="tags">
14304
14305
14306         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>.
14307
14308
14309       </div>
14310     </div>
14311     <div class="padding"></div>
14312
14313     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
14314     <div id="sidebar">
14315
14316
14317
14318 <h2>Archive</h2>
14319 <ul>
14320
14321 <li>2013
14322 <ul>
14323
14324 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
14325
14326 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
14327
14328 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
14329
14330 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (4)</a></li>
14331
14332 </ul></li>
14333
14334 <li>2012
14335 <ul>
14336
14337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14338
14339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
14340
14341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
14342
14343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
14344
14345 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
14346
14347 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
14348
14349 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
14350
14351 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14352
14353 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
14354
14355 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
14356
14357 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
14358
14359 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14360
14361 </ul></li>
14362
14363 <li>2011
14364 <ul>
14365
14366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
14367
14368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14369
14370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
14371
14372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14373
14374 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14375
14376 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14377
14378 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14379
14380 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14381
14382 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
14383
14384 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14385
14386 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14387
14388 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
14389
14390 </ul></li>
14391
14392 <li>2010
14393 <ul>
14394
14395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14396
14397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
14398
14399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14400
14401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
14402
14403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14404
14405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
14406
14407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
14408
14409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
14410
14411 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
14412
14413 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14414
14415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
14416
14417 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
14418
14419 </ul></li>
14420
14421 <li>2009
14422 <ul>
14423
14424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
14425
14426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
14427
14428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
14429
14430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
14431
14432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14433
14434 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
14435
14436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
14437
14438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14439
14440 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14441
14442 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14443
14444 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14445
14446 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14447
14448 </ul></li>
14449
14450 <li>2008
14451 <ul>
14452
14453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
14454
14455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14456
14457 </ul></li>
14458
14459 </ul>
14460
14461
14462
14463 <h2>Tags</h2>
14464 <ul>
14465
14466  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
14467
14468  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
14469
14470  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
14471
14472  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
14473
14474  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (6)</a></li>
14475
14476  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
14477
14478  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
14479
14480  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (71)</a></li>
14481
14482  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (122)</a></li>
14483
14484  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
14485
14486  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
14487
14488  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
14489
14490  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (187)</a></li>
14491
14492  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
14493
14494  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
14495
14496  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
14497
14498  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
14499
14500  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (33)</a></li>
14501
14502  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (6)</a></li>
14503
14504  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
14505
14506  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
14507
14508  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
14509
14510  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
14511
14512  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
14513
14514  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (229)</a></li>
14515
14516  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (151)</a></li>
14517
14518  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (7)</a></li>
14519
14520  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
14521
14522  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
14523
14524  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
14525
14526  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
14527
14528  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
14529
14530  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
14531
14532  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
14533
14534  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
14535
14536  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
14537
14538  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
14539
14540  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
14541
14542  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
14543
14544  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
14545
14546  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (42)</a></li>
14547
14548  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
14549
14550  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (6)</a></li>
14551
14552  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
14553
14554  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
14555
14556  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
14557
14558  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
14559
14560  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
14561
14562  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
14563
14564 </ul>
14565
14566
14567     </div>
14568     <p style="text-align: right">
14569  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
14570 </p>
14571
14572   </body>
14573 </html>