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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         19th August 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
  32 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
  33 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
  34 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
  35 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
  36 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
  37 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
  38 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
  39 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
  40 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
  41 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
  42 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
  43 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
  44 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
  45 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
  46 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
  47 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
  48
  49 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
  50 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
  51 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
  52 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
  53 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
  54 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
  55
  56       </div>
  57       <div class="tags">
  58
  59
  60         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>.
  61
  62
  63       </div>
  64     </div>
  65     <div class="padding"></div>
  66
  67     <div class="entry">
  68       <div class="title">
  69         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
  70       </div>
  71       <div class="date">
  72          9th August 2015
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="body">
  75         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
  76 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
  77 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
  78 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
  79 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
  80 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
  81 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
  82 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
  83 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
  84
  85 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
  86 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
  87 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
  88 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
  89 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
  90
  91 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
  92 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
  93 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
  94 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
  95 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
  96 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
  97
  98 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
  99 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 100 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 101 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 102 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 103 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 104 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 105 bring the prize down further.</p>
 106
 107 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 108 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 109 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 110 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 111 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 112 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 113 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 114 to the task.</p>
 115
 116 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 117 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 118 status can as usual be found on
 119 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 120 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 121 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 122 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 123 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 124 formatting.</p>
 125
 126 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 127 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 128 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 129 result in a few months.</p>
 130
 131       </div>
 132       <div class="tags">
 133
 134
 135         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>.
 136
 137
 138       </div>
 139     </div>
 140     <div class="padding"></div>
 141
 142     <div class="entry">
 143       <div class="title">
 144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 145       </div>
 146       <div class="date">
 147         16th July 2015
 148       </div>
 149       <div class="body">
 150         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 151 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 152 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 153 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 154 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 155 chapter.  Based on the
 156 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 157 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 158 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 159 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 160 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 161 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 162 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 163 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 164
 165 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 166 and add this text there:</p>
 167
 168 <pre>
 169 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 170 </pre>
 171
 172 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 173 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 174 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 175
 176 <pre>
 177 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 178 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 179   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 180     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 181 \usepackage{endnotes}
 182 \let\footnote=\endnote
 183 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 184 \begin{document}
 185     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 186   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 187 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 188 </pre>
 189
 190 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 191 this:</p>
 192
 193 <pre>
 194 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 195 </pre>
 196
 197 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 198 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 199 book project</a> is located.</p>
 200
 201       </div>
 202       <div class="tags">
 203
 204
 205         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>.
 206
 207
 208       </div>
 209     </div>
 210     <div class="padding"></div>
 211
 212     <div class="entry">
 213       <div class="title">
 214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 215       </div>
 216       <div class="date">
 217          7th July 2015
 218       </div>
 219       <div class="body">
 220         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 221 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 222 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 223 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 224 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 225 does not.</p>
 226
 227 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 228 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 229 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 230 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 231
 232 <p><blockquote>
 233
 234 <p>According to
 235 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
 236 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
 237 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
 238 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
 239 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
 240 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
 241
 242 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
 243 PDF named
 244 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
 245 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
 246 fees:</p>
 247
 248 <ul>
 249  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
 250   <ul>
 251    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
 252      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
 253      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
 254      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
 255
 256    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
 257      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
 258   </ul></li>
 259
 260  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
 261   <ul>
 262    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
 263      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
 264      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
 265
 266    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
 267      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
 268   </ul></li>
 269 </ul>
 270
 271 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
 272 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
 273 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
 274 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
 275 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
 276 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
 277
 278 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
 279 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
 280 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
 281 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
 282 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
 283 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
 284 access to personalized services?</p>
 285
 286 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
 287 Internet.</p>
 288 </blockquote></p>
 289
 290 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
 291 with the MPEG LA:</p>
 292
 293 <p><blockquote>
 294 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
 295 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
 296
 297 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
 298 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
 299 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
 300 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
 301 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
 302 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
 303 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
 304
 305 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
 306 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
 307 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
 308 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
 309 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
 310 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
 311 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
 312 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
 313 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
 314 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
 315 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
 316 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
 317
 318 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
 319 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
 320 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
 321 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
 322 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
 323 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
 324 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
 325
 326 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
 327 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
 328 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
 329 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
 330
 331 <p>For your reference, I have attached
 332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
 333 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
 334 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
 335 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
 336 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
 337 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
 338 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
 339 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
 340 be used for execution.</p>
 341
 342 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
 343 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
 344 free to contact me directly.</p>
 345 </blockquote></p>
 346
 347 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
 348 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
 349 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
 350 But I still had a few questions:</p>
 351
 352 <p><blockquote>
 353 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
 354 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
 355 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
 356 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
 357 typically look similar to this:
 358
 359 <p><blockquote>
 360   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 361   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
 362   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
 363   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
 364   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
 365   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
 366   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
 367   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
 368 </blockquote></p>
 369
 370 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
 371 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
 372 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
 373 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
 374 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
 375 </blockquote></p>
 376
 377 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
 378 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
 379
 380 <p><blockquote>
 381
 382 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
 383 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
 384 reads:</p>
 385
 386 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
 387 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
 388 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
 389 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
 390 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
 391 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
 392 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
 393 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
 394
 395 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
 396 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
 397 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
 398 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
 399 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
 400 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
 401 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
 402 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
 403
 404 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
 405 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
 406 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
 407 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
 408 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
 409 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
 410 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
 411 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
 412 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
 413
 414 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
 415 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
 416 Norway.</p>
 417
 418 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
 419 assistance, just let me know.</p>
 420 </blockquote></p>
 421
 422 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
 423 asked for more information:</p>
 424
 425 <p><blockquote>
 426
 427 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
 428 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
 429 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
 430 list available from &lt;URL:
 431 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
 432 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
 433 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
 434 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
 435 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
 436
 437 </blockquote></p>
 438
 439 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
 440 in that list:</p>
 441
 442 <p><blockquote>
 443
 444 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
 445 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
 446 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
 447 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
 448 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
 449 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
 450 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
 451 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
 452 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
 453
 454 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
 455 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
 456 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
 457 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
 458 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
 459 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
 460 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
 461 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
 462 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
 463 Portfolio Patents.</p>
 464 </blockquote></p>
 465
 466 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
 467 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
 468 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
 469 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
 470 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
 471 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
 472 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
 473 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
 474 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
 475
 476       </div>
 477       <div class="tags">
 478
 479
 480         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</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>.
 481
 482
 483       </div>
 484     </div>
 485     <div class="padding"></div>
 486
 487     <div class="entry">
 488       <div class="title">
 489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 490       </div>
 491       <div class="date">
 492          5th July 2015
 493       </div>
 494       <div class="body">
 495         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 496 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 497 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 498 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 499 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 500 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 501 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 502 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 503 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 504 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 505 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 506
 507 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 508 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 509 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 510 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 511 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 512 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 513 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 514
 515 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 516 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 517 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 518 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 519 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 520 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 521 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 522 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 523 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 524 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 525 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 526 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 527 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 528 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 529 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 530
 531 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 532 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 533 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 534 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 535
 536 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 537 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 538
 539 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 540 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 541 different
 542 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 543 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 544
 545       </div>
 546       <div class="tags">
 547
 548
 549         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>.
 550
 551
 552       </div>
 553     </div>
 554     <div class="padding"></div>
 555
 556     <div class="entry">
 557       <div class="title">
 558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 559       </div>
 560       <div class="date">
 561          3rd July 2015
 562       </div>
 563       <div class="body">
 564         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 565 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 566 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 567 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 568 flickering.</p>
 569
 570 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 571 still as
 572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 573 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 574 good help from
 575 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 576 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 577 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 578 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 579 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 580 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 581 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 582 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 583 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 584
 585 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 586 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 587 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 588 have suggestions.</p>
 589
 590 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 591 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 592 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 593
 594       </div>
 595       <div class="tags">
 596
 597
 598         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>.
 599
 600
 601       </div>
 602     </div>
 603     <div class="padding"></div>
 604
 605     <div class="entry">
 606       <div class="title">
 607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
 608       </div>
 609       <div class="date">
 610          2nd July 2015
 611       </div>
 612       <div class="body">
 613         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
 614 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
 615 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
 616 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
 617 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
 618 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
 619 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
 620 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
 621 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
 622 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
 623 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
 624 Youtube too</a>.</p>
 625
 626 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
 627 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
 628 pages</a> to view them.</p>
 629
 630 <ul>
 631
 632   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
 633       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
 634
 635   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
 636
 637   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
 638       (Olav Helland)</li>
 639
 640   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
 641       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
 642
 643   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
 644
 645   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
 646
 647   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
 648       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
 649
 650   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
 651
 652   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
 653
 654   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
 655
 656   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
 657
 658   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
 659       Sevens)</li>
 660
 661   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
 662       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
 663
 664   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
 665       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
 666
 667   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
 668       Dyvik)</li>
 669
 670   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
 671
 672 </ul>
 673
 674 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
 675 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
 676 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
 677 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
 678 which sent me on a detour to
 679 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
 680 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
 681 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
 682
 683       </div>
 684       <div class="tags">
 685
 686
 687         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>.
 688
 689
 690       </div>
 691     </div>
 692     <div class="padding"></div>
 693
 694     <div class="entry">
 695       <div class="title">
 696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
 697       </div>
 698       <div class="date">
 699         15th June 2015
 700       </div>
 701       <div class="body">
 702         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
 703 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
 704 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
 705 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
 706 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
 707 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
 708 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
 709 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
 710 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
 711
 712 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
 713 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
 714 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
 715 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
 716
 717 <pre>
 718 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
 719
 720 real    0m2.841s
 721 user    0m0.184s
 722 sys     0m0.036s
 723 %
 724 </pre>
 725
 726 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
 727 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
 728 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
 729 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
 730 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
 731
 732 <pre>
 733 digraph ownership {
 734 rankdir = LR;
 735 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
 736 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
 737 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
 738 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
 739 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
 740 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
 741 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
 742 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
 743 }
 744 </pre>
 745
 746 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
 747 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
 748 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
 749
 750 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
 751
 752 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
 753 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
 754 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
 755 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
 756 of the ownership links.</p>
 757
 758 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
 759 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
 760
 761 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
 762 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
 763 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
 764 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
 765 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
 766 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
 767 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
 768
 769       </div>
 770       <div class="tags">
 771
 772
 773         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 774
 775
 776       </div>
 777     </div>
 778     <div class="padding"></div>
 779
 780     <div class="entry">
 781       <div class="title">
 782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
 783       </div>
 784       <div class="date">
 785         11th June 2015
 786       </div>
 787       <div class="body">
 788         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
 789 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
 790 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
 791 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
 792 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
 793 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
 794 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
 795 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
 796 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
 797 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
 798 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
 799 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
 800 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
 801
 802 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
 803 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
 804 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
 805 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
 806 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
 807 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
 808 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
 809 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
 810 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
 811 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
 812
 813 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
 814 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
 815 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
 816 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
 817 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
 818 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
 819 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
 820 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
 821 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
 822
 823 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
 824 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
 825 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
 826 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
 827 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
 828 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
 829 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
 830 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
 831 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
 832 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
 833 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
 834
 835       </div>
 836       <div class="tags">
 837
 838
 839         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>.
 840
 841
 842       </div>
 843     </div>
 844     <div class="padding"></div>
 845
 846     <div class="entry">
 847       <div class="title">
 848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
 849       </div>
 850       <div class="date">
 851         10th May 2015
 852       </div>
 853       <div class="body">
 854         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
 855 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
 856 criminal or not, are
 857 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
 858 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
 859 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
 860 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
 861 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
 862 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
 863 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
 864 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
 865 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
 866 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
 867 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
 868 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
 869 the police.</p>
 870
 871 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
 872 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
 873 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
 874 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
 875 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
 876 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
 877 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
 878 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
 879 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
 880 is good to know that
 881 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
 882 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
 883 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
 884 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
 885 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
 886 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
 887 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
 888 business getting access to that information.</p>
 889
 890 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
 891 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
 892 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
 893 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
 894 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
 895 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
 896 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
 897
 898 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
 899 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
 900 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
 901 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
 902
 903 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
 904 really could make such decision, I wrote
 905 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
 906 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
 907 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
 908
 909       </div>
 910       <div class="tags">
 911
 912
 913         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 914
 915
 916       </div>
 917     </div>
 918     <div class="padding"></div>
 919
 920     <div class="entry">
 921       <div class="title">
 922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
 923       </div>
 924       <div class="date">
 925          1st May 2015
 926       </div>
 927       <div class="body">
 928         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
 929 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
 930 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
 931 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
 932 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
 933 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
 934 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
 935
 936 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
 937 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
 938 the 2012 numbers are from
 939 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
 940 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
 941 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
 942 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
 943 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
 944
 945 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
 946 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
 947 enough.  See for example a
 948 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
 949 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
 950 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
 951 to get the storage requirements.</p>
 952
 953 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
 954 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
 955 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
 956 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
 957 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
 958
 959 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
 960 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
 961 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
 962 and large organisations:</p>
 963
 964 <table border="1">
 965 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
 966 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
 967 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
 968 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
 969 </table>
 970
 971 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
 972 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
 973 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
 974 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
 975 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
 976 collecting the data?</p>
 977
 978       </div>
 979       <div class="tags">
 980
 981
 982         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 983
 984
 985       </div>
 986     </div>
 987     <div class="padding"></div>
 988
 989     <div class="entry">
 990       <div class="title">
 991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
 992       </div>
 993       <div class="date">
 994         26th April 2015
 995       </div>
 996       <div class="body">
 997         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
 998 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
 999 announcement today</a>:</p>
1000
1001 <pre>
1002 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1003 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1004 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1005 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1006
1007 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1008 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1009 later today ;)
1010
1011 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1012 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1013 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1014 be possible and encouraged!
1015
1016 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1017 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1018
1019 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1020 operating system for schools, universities and other
1021 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1022 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1023 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1024 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1025 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1026 days.
1027
1028 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1029 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1030 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1031 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1032
1033 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1034 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1035 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1036 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1037 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1038 least 5 characters!
1039
1040 == Where to download ==
1041
1042 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1043 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1044
1045     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1046     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1047
1048 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1049
1050 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1051 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1052 time):
1053
1054     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1055     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1056
1057 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1058
1059 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1060 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1061 options.
1062
1063 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1064
1065 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1066 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1067
1068 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1069 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1070 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1071 online version of the translated manual.
1072
1073 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1074 release notes and the installation manual:
1075 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1076 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1077
1078
1079 == Errata / known problems ==
1080
1081     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1082     DHCP (#780461).
1083
1084     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1085
1086 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1087 hostname immediately.
1088
1089 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1090 more current and complete list.
1091
1092 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1093
1094 === Software updates ===
1095
1096 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1097
1098  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1099    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1100    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1101
1102  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1103    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1104    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1105    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1106      the others see the manual.
1107  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1108  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1109  * GOsa 2.7.4
1110  * LTSP 5.5.4
1111  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1112  * new boot framework: systemd
1113  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1114  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1115  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1116  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1117  * golearn 0.9
1118  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1119  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1120  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1121  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1122    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1123
1124 === Installation changes ===
1125
1126     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1127     for the hardware present.
1128
1129 === Fixed bugs ===
1130
1131 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1132 from a user perspective:
1133
1134  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1135    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1136    information is corrected (710362)
1137
1138  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1139
1140 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1141
1142 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1143 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1144
1145
1146 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1147
1148 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1149 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1150 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1151 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1152 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1153 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1154 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1155 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1156 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1157 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1158 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1159 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1160 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1161 environment.
1162
1163 == About Debian ==
1164
1165 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1166 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1167 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1168 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1169 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1170 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1171 operating system.
1172
1173 == Thanks ==
1174
1175 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1176 You rock.
1177 </pre>
1178
1179       </div>
1180       <div class="tags">
1181
1182
1183         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>.
1184
1185
1186       </div>
1187     </div>
1188     <div class="padding"></div>
1189
1190     <div class="entry">
1191       <div class="title">
1192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1193       </div>
1194       <div class="date">
1195         15th April 2015
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="body">
1198         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1199 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1200 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1201 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1202 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1203 Agarwal.</p>
1204
1205 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1206
1207 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1208 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1209 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1210 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1211 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1212 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1213
1214 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1215 project?</strong></p>
1216
1217 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1218 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1219 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1220 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1221 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1222 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1223 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1224
1225 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1226 Edu?</strong></p>
1227
1228 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1229 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1230 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1231 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1232 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1233 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1234 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1235 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
1236
1237 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
1238 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
1239 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
1240 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
1241 for the developer per-se.</p>
1242
1243 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1244 Edu?</strong></p>
1245
1246 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
1247 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
1248 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
1249
1250 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
1251 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
1252 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
1253 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
1254 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
1255 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
1256 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
1257
1258 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
1259 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
1260 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
1261
1262 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
1263 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
1264 interactive manner. While sites such as the
1265 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
1266 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
1267 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
1268 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
1269 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
1270 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
1271 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
1272 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
1273 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
1274 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
1275 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
1276
1277 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
1278 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
1279 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
1280 also be used.</p>
1281
1282 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
1283 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
1284 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
1285 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
1286 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
1287 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
1288 the user's input.</p>
1289
1290 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
1291 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
1292 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
1293 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
1294 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
1295 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
1296 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
1297 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
1298
1299 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
1300 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
1301 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
1302 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
1303 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
1304 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
1305 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
1306 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
1307
1308 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1309
1310 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
1311 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
1312 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
1313 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
1314 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
1315
1316 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1317 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1318
1319 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
1320 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
1321 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
1322 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
1323 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
1324 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
1325
1326 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
1327 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
1328 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
1329 well.</p>
1330
1331 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
1332 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
1333 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
1334 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
1335
1336 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
1337 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
1338 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
1339 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
1340 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
1341 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
1342 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
1343 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
1344 releases.</p>
1345
1346 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
1347 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
1348 is aimed at.
1349
1350 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
1351 around 2 years, and
1352 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
1353 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
1354 there was :</p>
1355
1356 <ol>
1357
1358   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
1359    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
1360    portion/syllabus given.</li>
1361
1362   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
1363    is in the syllabus.</li>
1364
1365   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
1366    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
1367    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
1368    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
1369    as recognizable as say a
1370    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
1371    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
1372    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
1373    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
1374    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
1375    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
1376
1377 </ol>
1378
1379       </div>
1380       <div class="tags">
1381
1382
1383         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>.
1384
1385
1386       </div>
1387     </div>
1388     <div class="padding"></div>
1389
1390     <div class="entry">
1391       <div class="title">
1392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
1393       </div>
1394       <div class="date">
1395          7th April 2015
1396       </div>
1397       <div class="body">
1398         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
1399 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
1400 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
1401
1402 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
1403 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
1404 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
1405 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
1406 part of my involvement with the
1407 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
1408 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
1409 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
1410 Hackathon with our friends
1411 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
1412 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
1413 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
1414 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
1415
1416 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
1417 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
1418
1419       </div>
1420       <div class="tags">
1421
1422
1423         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1424
1425
1426       </div>
1427     </div>
1428     <div class="padding"></div>
1429
1430     <div class="entry">
1431       <div class="title">
1432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
1433       </div>
1434       <div class="date">
1435          4th April 2015
1436       </div>
1437       <div class="body">
1438         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
1439 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1440 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1441 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
1442 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
1443 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
1444 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
1445 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1446 project pages.  You can also check out the
1447 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1448 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1449 and HTML version available in the
1450 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1451 directory</a>.</p>
1452
1453 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1454 you find any.</p>
1455
1456       </div>
1457       <div class="tags">
1458
1459
1460         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>.
1461
1462
1463       </div>
1464     </div>
1465     <div class="padding"></div>
1466
1467     <div class="entry">
1468       <div class="title">
1469         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
1470       </div>
1471       <div class="date">
1472          9th March 2015
1473       </div>
1474       <div class="body">
1475         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
1476 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
1477 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
1478 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
1479 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
1480 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
1481 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
1482 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
1483 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
1484 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
1485 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
1486 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
1487 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
1488 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
1489
1490 <p>The list of NUUG videos
1491 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
1492 include things like a
1493 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
1494 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
1495 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
1496 re-implementation</a>, the
1497 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
1498 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
1499 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
1500 video</A> and many others.</p>
1501
1502 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
1503 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
1504 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
1505 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
1506 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
1507 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
1508 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
1509 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
1510 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1511 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
1512
1513 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
1514 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
1515 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
1516 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
1517 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
1518 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
1519 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
1520 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
1521 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
1522 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
1523
1524       </div>
1525       <div class="tags">
1526
1527
1528         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/h264">h264</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>.
1529
1530
1531       </div>
1532     </div>
1533     <div class="padding"></div>
1534
1535     <div class="entry">
1536       <div class="title">
1537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
1538       </div>
1539       <div class="date">
1540         28th February 2015
1541       </div>
1542       <div class="body">
1543         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
1544 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
1545 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
1546 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
1547 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
1548 made for
1549 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
1550 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
1551 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
1552 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
1553 a friend have
1554 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
1555 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
1556 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
1557 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
1558 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
1559 it happen ourselves.
1560 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
1561 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
1562 is.</p>
1563
1564 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
1565 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
1566
1567       </div>
1568       <div class="tags">
1569
1570
1571         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1572
1573
1574       </div>
1575     </div>
1576     <div class="padding"></div>
1577
1578     <div class="entry">
1579       <div class="title">
1580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
1581       </div>
1582       <div class="date">
1583         25th February 2015
1584       </div>
1585       <div class="body">
1586         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1587 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1588 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1589 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1590 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1591 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1592 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1593 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1594 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1595 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1596 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
1597 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
1598 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
1599 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
1600 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
1601 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
1602 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
1603
1604 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
1605 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
1606 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
1607 with VLC.</p>
1608
1609 <ul>
1610   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
1611   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
1612 </ul>
1613
1614 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
1615 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
1616 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
1617 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
1618 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
1619 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
1620 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
1621
1622 <blockquote><pre>
1623 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
1624  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
1625  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
1626 </pre></blockquote>
1627
1628 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
1629 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
1630 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
1631 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
1632
1633       </div>
1634       <div class="tags">
1635
1636
1637         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/h264">h264</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>.
1638
1639
1640       </div>
1641     </div>
1642     <div class="padding"></div>
1643
1644     <div class="entry">
1645       <div class="title">
1646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
1647       </div>
1648       <div class="date">
1649         10th February 2015
1650       </div>
1651       <div class="body">
1652         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
1653 that
1654 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
1655 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
1656 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
1657 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
1658 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
1659 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
1660 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
1661 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
1662 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
1663 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
1664 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
1665 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
1666 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
1667 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
1668 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
1669
1670 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
1671 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
1672 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
1673 controversy about these scanners.</p>
1674
1675 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
1676 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
1677 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
1678
1679       </div>
1680       <div class="tags">
1681
1682
1683         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>.
1684
1685
1686       </div>
1687     </div>
1688     <div class="padding"></div>
1689
1690     <div class="entry">
1691       <div class="title">
1692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
1693       </div>
1694       <div class="date">
1695          8th February 2015
1696       </div>
1697       <div class="body">
1698         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
1699 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
1700 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
1701 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
1702 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
1703 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
1704 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
1705 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
1706 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
1707 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
1708 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
1709 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
1710
1711 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
1712 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
1713 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
1714 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
1715
1716 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
1717 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
1718 distribute the TV content.  The
1719 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
1720 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
1721 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
1722 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
1723 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
1724 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
1725 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
1726 following activity, we now have the schedule
1727 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
1728 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
1729 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
1730 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
1731
1732 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
1733 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
1734 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
1735 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
1736 streams are working as they should.</p>
1737
1738       </div>
1739       <div class="tags">
1740
1741
1742         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>.
1743
1744
1745       </div>
1746     </div>
1747     <div class="padding"></div>
1748
1749     <div class="entry">
1750       <div class="title">
1751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
1752       </div>
1753       <div class="date">
1754         12th January 2015
1755       </div>
1756       <div class="body">
1757         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
1758 Foundation</a> announced a new video
1759 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
1760 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
1761 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
1762 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
1763 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
1764 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
1765
1766 <p>But today I was told that
1767 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
1768 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
1769 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
1770 available in
1771 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
1772 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
1773 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
1774
1775 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
1776 Libreplanet
1777 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
1778 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
1779
1780       </div>
1781       <div class="tags">
1782
1783
1784         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1785
1786
1787       </div>
1788     </div>
1789     <div class="padding"></div>
1790
1791     <div class="entry">
1792       <div class="title">
1793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
1794       </div>
1795       <div class="date">
1796         30th December 2014
1797       </div>
1798       <div class="body">
1799         <p>I am very happy that we in the
1800 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
1801 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
1802 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
1803 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
1804 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
1805 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
1806 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
1807 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
1808 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
1809 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
1810
1811 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
1812 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
1813 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
1814 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
1815 reports in public.</p>
1816
1817       </div>
1818       <div class="tags">
1819
1820
1821         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>.
1822
1823
1824       </div>
1825     </div>
1826     <div class="padding"></div>
1827
1828     <div class="entry">
1829       <div class="title">
1830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
1831       </div>
1832       <div class="date">
1833         19th December 2014
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="body">
1836         <p>So, Sony caved in
1837 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
1838 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
1839 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
1840 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
1841 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
1842 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
1843 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
1844 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
1845 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
1846 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
1847 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
1848 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
1849 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
1850
1851 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
1852 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
1853 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
1854 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
1855
1856 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
1857 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
1858 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
1859 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
1860 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
1861 income. :)</p>
1862
1863       </div>
1864       <div class="tags">
1865
1866
1867         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1868
1869
1870       </div>
1871     </div>
1872     <div class="padding"></div>
1873
1874     <div class="entry">
1875       <div class="title">
1876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
1877       </div>
1878       <div class="date">
1879         22nd November 2014
1880       </div>
1881       <div class="body">
1882         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1883 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1884 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1885 courtesy of
1886 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1887 Schubert</a> and
1888 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1889 McVittie</a>.
1890
1891 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1892 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1893 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1894 you upgrade:</p>
1895
1896 <p><blockquote><pre>
1897 Package: systemd-sysv
1898 Pin: release o=Debian
1899 Pin-Priority: -1
1900 </pre></blockquote><p>
1901
1902 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1903 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1904 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1905 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1906 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1907
1908 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1909 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1910 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1911 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1912 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1913 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1914
1915 <p><blockquote><pre>
1916 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1917 </pre></blockquote><p>
1918
1919 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1920
1921 <p><blockquote><pre>
1922 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1923 </pre></blockquote><p>
1924
1925 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1926 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1927
1928 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1929 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1930 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1931 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1932 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1933 Jessie is released.</p>
1934
1935 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1936 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1937 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1938 line.</p>
1939
1940       </div>
1941       <div class="tags">
1942
1943
1944         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>.
1945
1946
1947       </div>
1948     </div>
1949     <div class="padding"></div>
1950
1951     <div class="entry">
1952       <div class="title">
1953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1954       </div>
1955       <div class="date">
1956         10th November 2014
1957       </div>
1958       <div class="body">
1959         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1960 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1961 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1962
1963 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1964 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1965 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1966 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1967 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1968 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1969 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1970 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1971 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1972 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1973 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1974 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1975 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1976 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1977 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1978
1979 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1980 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1981 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1982 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1983 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1984 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1985 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1986 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1987 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1988 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1989 were fairly easy, and
1990 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1991 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1992 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1993 useful approach.</p>
1994
1995 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1996 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1997 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1998 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1999 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2000 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2001 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2002 this:</p>
2003
2004 <p><blockquote><pre>
2005 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2006   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2007 </pre></blockquote></p>
2008
2009 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2010 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2011
2012 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2013 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2014 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2015 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2016 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2017 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2018 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2019 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2020 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2021 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2022 system.</p>
2023
2024 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2025 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2026 SMTorP. :)</p>
2027
2028       </div>
2029       <div class="tags">
2030
2031
2032         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2033
2034
2035       </div>
2036     </div>
2037     <div class="padding"></div>
2038
2039     <div class="entry">
2040       <div class="title">
2041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2042       </div>
2043       <div class="date">
2044         27th October 2014
2045       </div>
2046       <div class="body">
2047         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2048 sent out
2049 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2050 announcement</a>:</p>
2051
2052 <pre>
2053 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2054 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2055
2056 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2057 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2058 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2059 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2060 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2061 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2062 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2063
2064 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2065 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2066 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2067 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2068 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2069 of at least 5 characters!
2070
2071  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2072
2073 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2074 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2075 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2076 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2077 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2078
2079 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2080 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2081
2082 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2083 ===============================
2084
2085 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2086 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2087 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2088 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2089 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2090 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2091 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2092 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2093 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2094 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2095 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2096 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2097 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2098 environment.
2099
2100  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2101  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
2102
2103 Full release notes and manual
2104 =============================
2105
2106 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2107 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2108 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2109 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2110 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2111
2112  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2113  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2114
2115 Where to get it
2116 ---------------
2117
2118 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2119
2120  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2121  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2122  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2123
2124 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2125
2126 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2127 ===============================================================================
2128
2129
2130 Installation changes
2131 --------------------
2132
2133  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2134
2135 Software updates
2136 ----------------
2137
2138 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2139
2140  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2141  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2142    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2143    choose one of the others see manual.)
2144  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2145  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2146  * GOsa 2.7.4
2147  * LTSP 5.5.4
2148  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2149  * new boot framework: systemd
2150  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2151  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2152  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2153  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2154  * golearn 0.9
2155  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2156  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2157  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2158    installation.
2159  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2160    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2161
2162  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2163  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2164
2165 Fixed bugs
2166 ----------
2167
2168  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2169    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2170    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2171  * and many others.
2172
2173 Documentation and translation updates
2174 -------------------------------------
2175
2176  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2177    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2178    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2179
2180 Other changes
2181 -------------
2182
2183  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2184    server takes more time.
2185  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2186    doesn't work.
2187
2188 Regressions / known problems
2189 ----------------------------
2190
2191  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2192    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2193    and Debian bug #762103).
2194  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2195    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2196  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2197    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2198    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2199
2200 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2201
2202  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2203
2204 How to report bugs
2205 ------------------
2206
2207 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2208
2209 About Debian
2210 ============
2211
2212 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2213 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2214 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2215 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2216 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2217 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2218 operating system.
2219
2220 Contact Information
2221 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2222 mail to press@debian.org.
2223
2224  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2225 </pre>
2226
2227       </div>
2228       <div class="tags">
2229
2230
2231         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>.
2232
2233
2234       </div>
2235     </div>
2236     <div class="padding"></div>
2237
2238     <div class="entry">
2239       <div class="title">
2240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
2241       </div>
2242       <div class="date">
2243         23rd October 2014
2244       </div>
2245       <div class="body">
2246         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
2247 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
2248 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
2249 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
2250 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
2251 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
2252 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
2253 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
2254 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
2255 live.</p>
2256
2257 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
2258 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
2259 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
2260 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
2261 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
2262 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
2263 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
2264 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
2265
2266       </div>
2267       <div class="tags">
2268
2269
2270         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>.
2271
2272
2273       </div>
2274     </div>
2275     <div class="padding"></div>
2276
2277     <div class="entry">
2278       <div class="title">
2279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
2280       </div>
2281       <div class="date">
2282         22nd October 2014
2283       </div>
2284       <div class="body">
2285         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2286 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2287 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2288 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2289 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2290 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2291 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2292 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2293 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2294 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2295 lists I recently took over:</p>
2296
2297 <p><blockquote><pre>
2298 % time listadmin xiph
2299 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2300 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2301
2302 real    0m1.709s
2303 user    0m0.232s
2304 sys     0m0.012s
2305 %
2306 </pre></blockquote></p>
2307
2308 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2309 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2310 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2311 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2312 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2313 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2314 program.</p>
2315
2316 <p>If you install
2317 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2318 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2319 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2320
2321 <p><blockquote><pre>
2322 username username@example.org
2323 spamlevel 23
2324 default discard
2325 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2326
2327 password secret
2328 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2329 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2330
2331 password hidden
2332 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2333 </pre></blockquote></p>
2334
2335 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2336 learn the details.</p>
2337
2338 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2339 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2340 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2341 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2342
2343 <p><blockquote><pre>
2344 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2345 </pre></blockquote></p>
2346
2347 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2348 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2349 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2350 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2351 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2352 email.</p>
2353
2354 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2355 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2356 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2357 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2358 software.</p>
2359
2360 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2361 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2362 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2363
2364 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2365 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2366 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2367 sure why.</p>
2368
2369       </div>
2370       <div class="tags">
2371
2372
2373         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>.
2374
2375
2376       </div>
2377     </div>
2378     <div class="padding"></div>
2379
2380     <div class="entry">
2381       <div class="title">
2382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2383       </div>
2384       <div class="date">
2385         17th October 2014
2386       </div>
2387       <div class="body">
2388         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2389 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2390 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2391 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2392 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2393 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2394 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2395
2396 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2397 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2398 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2399 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2400 of this story.)</p>
2401
2402 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2403 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2404 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2405 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2406 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2407 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2408 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2409 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2410 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2411 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2412
2413 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2414 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2415 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2416 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2417
2418 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2419 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2420
2421 <p><blockquote><pre>
2422 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2423 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2424 </pre></blockquote></p>
2425
2426 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2427 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2428 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2429 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2430 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2431 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2432 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2433 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2434
2435 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2436 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2437
2438 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2439 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2440 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2441 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2442 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2443
2444 <p><blockquote><pre>
2445 Task: isenkram-packages
2446 Section: hardware
2447 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2448  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2449  proposed.
2450 Test-new-install: show show
2451 Relevance: 8
2452 Packages: for-current-hardware
2453
2454 Task: isenkram-firmware
2455 Section: hardware
2456 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2457  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2458  packages are proposed.
2459 Test-new-install: mark show
2460 Relevance: 8
2461 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2462 </pre></blockquote></p>
2463
2464 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2465 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2466 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2467 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2468 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2469
2470 <p><blockquote><pre>
2471 #!/bin/sh
2472 #
2473 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2474 export PATH
2475 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2476 </pre></blockquote></p>
2477
2478 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2479 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2480
2481 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2482 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2483 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2484 install.</p>
2485
2486 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2487 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2488 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2489
2490       </div>
2491       <div class="tags">
2492
2493
2494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2495
2496
2497       </div>
2498     </div>
2499     <div class="padding"></div>
2500
2501     <div class="entry">
2502       <div class="title">
2503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
2504       </div>
2505       <div class="date">
2506          4th October 2014
2507       </div>
2508       <div class="body">
2509         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2510 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2511 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2512 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2513
2514 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2515
2516 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2517 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2518 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2519
2520       </div>
2521       <div class="tags">
2522
2523
2524         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>.
2525
2526
2527       </div>
2528     </div>
2529     <div class="padding"></div>
2530
2531     <div class="entry">
2532       <div class="title">
2533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
2534       </div>
2535       <div class="date">
2536          4th October 2014
2537       </div>
2538       <div class="body">
2539         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
2540 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
2541 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
2542 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
2543 Dibb.</p>
2544
2545 <p>I just wrapped up
2546 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
2547 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
2548 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
2549 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
2550 0.17.</p>
2551
2552 <ul>
2553
2554  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
2555  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
2556    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
2557  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
2558  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
2559  <li>Fix include orders</li>
2560  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
2561  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
2562  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
2563    the palette size is the same.</li>
2564  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
2565  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
2566  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
2567  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
2568    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
2569
2570 </ul>
2571
2572 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
2573 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
2574 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
2575
2576       </div>
2577       <div class="tags">
2578
2579
2580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2581
2582
2583       </div>
2584     </div>
2585     <div class="padding"></div>
2586
2587     <div class="entry">
2588       <div class="title">
2589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
2590       </div>
2591       <div class="date">
2592         26th September 2014
2593       </div>
2594       <div class="body">
2595         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2596 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2597 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2598 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2599 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2600 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2601 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2602 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2603 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2604 future.  The
2605 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2606 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2607 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2608 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2609 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2610
2611 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2612 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2613 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2614 or rsync (use
2615 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2616 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2617 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2618 install with some tweaking.</p>
2619
2620 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2621 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2622
2623 <p><blockquote><pre>
2624 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2625 </pre></blockquote></p>
2626
2627 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2628 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2629 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2630 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2631
2632 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2633 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2634 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2635 your need.</p>
2636
2637 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2638 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2639 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2640 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2641 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2642 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2643 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2644 days.</p>
2645
2646 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2647 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2648 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2649 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2650 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2651 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2652 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2653 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2654 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2655
2656 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2657 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2658 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2659
2660       </div>
2661       <div class="tags">
2662
2663
2664         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>.
2665
2666
2667       </div>
2668     </div>
2669     <div class="padding"></div>
2670
2671     <div class="entry">
2672       <div class="title">
2673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
2674       </div>
2675       <div class="date">
2676         25th September 2014
2677       </div>
2678       <div class="body">
2679         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2680 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2681 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2682 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2683 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2684 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2685 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2686 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2687 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2688 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2689 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2690 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2691 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2692
2693 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2694 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2695 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2696 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2697 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2698 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2699 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2700 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2701 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2702 list</a>. :)</p>
2703
2704       </div>
2705       <div class="tags">
2706
2707
2708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2709
2710
2711       </div>
2712     </div>
2713     <div class="padding"></div>
2714
2715     <div class="entry">
2716       <div class="title">
2717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
2718       </div>
2719       <div class="date">
2720         16th September 2014
2721       </div>
2722       <div class="body">
2723         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
2724 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
2725 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
2726 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
2727 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
2728 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
2729 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2730 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2731 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2732 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2733 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2734 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2735 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2736 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2737
2738 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2739 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2740 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2741 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2742 depend on the small and clever package
2743 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2744 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2745 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2746 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
2747 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
2748 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
2749 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
2750 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
2751 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
2752 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
2753 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
2754
2755 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
2756 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2757 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2758 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2759 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2760 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2761 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2762 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2763 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2764 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2765 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2766 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2767 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2768 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2769 dialog.</p>
2770
2771 <p><table>
2772
2773 <tr>
2774 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2775 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2776 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2777 <th>Reduction</th>
2778 </tr>
2779
2780 <tr>
2781 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2782 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2783 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2784 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2785 </tr>
2786
2787 <tr>
2788 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
2789 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
2790 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
2791 <td>23 min 40%</td>
2792 </tr>
2793
2794 <tr>
2795 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
2796 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
2797 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
2798 <td>11 min 50%</td>
2799 </tr>
2800
2801 <tr>
2802 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
2803 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
2804 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
2805 <td>2 min 33%</td>
2806 </tr>
2807
2808 <tr>
2809 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
2810 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
2811 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
2812 <td>4 min 21%</td>
2813 </tr>
2814
2815 </table></p>
2816
2817 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
2818 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
2819 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
2820 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
2821 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
2822 installed.</p>
2823
2824 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
2825 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
2826 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
2827 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
2828 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
2829 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
2830 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
2831 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
2832 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
2833 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
2834 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
2835 for the entire installation.</p>
2836
2837 <p>I've implemented this in the
2838 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
2839 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
2840 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
2841 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
2842 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
2843
2844 <p><blockquote><pre>
2845 #!/bin/sh
2846 set -e
2847 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2848 info() {
2849     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
2850 }
2851 error() {
2852     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
2853 }
2854 override_install() {
2855     apt-install eatmydata || true
2856     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
2857         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2858             file=/usr/bin/$bin
2859             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
2860             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
2861                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
2862                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
2863                     > /target$file.edu
2864                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
2865                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2866                     --rename --quiet --add $file
2867                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
2868             else
2869                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
2870             fi
2871         done
2872     else
2873         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
2874     fi
2875 }
2876
2877 override_install
2878 </pre></blockquote></p>
2879
2880 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
2881 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
2882
2883 <p><blockquote><pre>
2884 #! /bin/sh -e
2885 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2886 error() {
2887     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
2888 }
2889 remove_install_override() {
2890     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2891         file=/usr/bin/$bin
2892         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
2893             rm /target$file
2894             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2895                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
2896             rm /target$file.edu
2897         else
2898             error "Missing divert for $file."
2899         fi
2900     done
2901     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2902 }
2903
2904 remove_install_override
2905 </pre></blockquote></p>
2906
2907 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2908 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2909 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2910
2911 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2912 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2913 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2914 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2915 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2916 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2917 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2918 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2919 everyone.</p>
2920
2921 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2922 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2923 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2924 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2925
2926 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2927 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2928 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2929 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2930 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2931
2932 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2933 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2934 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2935 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2936 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2937
2938       </div>
2939       <div class="tags">
2940
2941
2942         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>.
2943
2944
2945       </div>
2946     </div>
2947     <div class="padding"></div>
2948
2949     <div class="entry">
2950       <div class="title">
2951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
2952       </div>
2953       <div class="date">
2954         10th September 2014
2955       </div>
2956       <div class="body">
2957         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2958 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2959 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2960 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2961 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2962 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2963 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2964 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2965 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2966 those problems are gone now.</p>
2967
2968 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2969 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2970 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2971 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2972 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2973
2974 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2975 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2976 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2977
2978 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2979 line:</p>
2980
2981 <p><blockquote><pre>
2982 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2983 </pre></blockquote></p>
2984
2985 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2986 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2987 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2988 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2989
2990 <p><blockquote><pre>
2991 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2992 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2993 %
2994 </pre></blockquote></p>
2995
2996 <p>Now if only
2997 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2998 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2999 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3000 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3001 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3002 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3003 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3004 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3005 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3006
3007       </div>
3008       <div class="tags">
3009
3010
3011         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3012
3013
3014       </div>
3015     </div>
3016     <div class="padding"></div>
3017
3018     <div class="entry">
3019       <div class="title">
3020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
3021       </div>
3022       <div class="date">
3023         25th August 2014
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="body">
3026         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3027 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3028 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3029 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3030 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3031 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3032 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3033 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3034 am not sure.
3035 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3036 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3037 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3038 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3039 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3040 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3041 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3042 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3043 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3044 licenses are.</p>
3045
3046 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3047 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3048 end user</a>
3049 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3050 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3051
3052 <p><blockquote>
3053 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3054 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3055
3056 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3057 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3058 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3059 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3060 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3061 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3062 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3063 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3064 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3065 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3066 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3067 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3068 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3069 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3070 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3071 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3072 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3073 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3074
3075 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3076 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3077
3078 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3079 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3080 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3081 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3082 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3083 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3084 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3085 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3086 </blockquote></p>
3087
3088 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3089 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3090
3091 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3092 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3093
3094 <p><blockquote>
3095
3096 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3097 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3098 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3099 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3100 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3101 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3102 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3103 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3104 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3105 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3106 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3107 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3108
3109 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3110 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3111 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3112 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3113 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3114 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3115 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3116 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3117 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3118 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3119 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3120 additional details.</p>
3121
3122 </blockquote></p>
3123
3124 <p>Some free software like
3125 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3126 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3127 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3128 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3129
3130       </div>
3131       <div class="tags">
3132
3133
3134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</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>.
3135
3136
3137       </div>
3138     </div>
3139     <div class="padding"></div>
3140
3141     <div class="entry">
3142       <div class="title">
3143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3144       </div>
3145       <div class="date">
3146         31st July 2014
3147       </div>
3148       <div class="body">
3149         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3150 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3151 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3152 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3153 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3154 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3155
3156 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3157
3158 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3159 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3160 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3161 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3162 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3163 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3164 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3165 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3166
3167 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3168 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3169 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3170 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3171 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3172 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3173
3174 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3175 project?</strong></p>
3176
3177 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3178 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3179 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3180 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3181 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3182 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3183 with this job.</p>
3184
3185 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3186 Edu?</strong></p>
3187
3188 <p>The independence.</p>
3189
3190 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3191 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3192 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3193
3194 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3195 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3196 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3197 working reliable. </p>
3198
3199 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3200 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3201 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3202 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3203 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3204 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3205 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3206 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3207
3208 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3209 Edu?</strong></p>
3210
3211 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3212 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3213 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3214
3215 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3216
3217 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3218 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3219
3220 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3221 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3222
3223 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3224 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3225 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3226 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3227 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3228 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3229 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3230
3231       </div>
3232       <div class="tags">
3233
3234
3235         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>.
3236
3237
3238       </div>
3239     </div>
3240     <div class="padding"></div>
3241
3242     <div class="entry">
3243       <div class="title">
3244         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
3245       </div>
3246       <div class="date">
3247         23rd July 2014
3248       </div>
3249       <div class="body">
3250         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
3251 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3252 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3253 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
3254 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
3255 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
3256 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
3257 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
3258 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
3259 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
3260 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
3261 the translation show this very well:</p>
3262
3263 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3264
3265 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
3266 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3267 project pages and the
3268 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
3269 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3270 and HTML version available in the
3271 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
3272 directory</a>.</p>
3273
3274 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
3275 you find any.</p>
3276
3277       </div>
3278       <div class="tags">
3279
3280
3281         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>.
3282
3283
3284       </div>
3285     </div>
3286     <div class="padding"></div>
3287
3288     <div class="entry">
3289       <div class="title">
3290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
3291       </div>
3292       <div class="date">
3293         17th June 2014
3294       </div>
3295       <div class="body">
3296         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3297 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3298 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3299 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3300 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3301
3302 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3303 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3304 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3305 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3306 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3307 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3308 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3309 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3310 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3311 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3312 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3313 goals.</p>
3314
3315 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3316 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3317 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3318 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3319 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3320 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3321 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3322 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3323 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3324 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3325 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3326 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3327 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3328 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3329 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3330 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3331 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3332 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3333 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3334 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3335 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3336 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3337 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3338 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3339
3340 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3341 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3342 track the English original.  For this we use the
3343 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3344 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3345 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3346 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3347 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3348 files), which the translations update with the native language
3349 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3350 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3351 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3352 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3353 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3354 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3355 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3356 of the documentation.</p>
3357
3358 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3359 recommend using
3360 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3361 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3362 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3363 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3364 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3365 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3366 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3367 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3368
3369 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3370 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3371 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3372 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3373 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3374 translated images by storing translated versions in
3375 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3376 package maintainers know more.</p>
3377
3378 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3379 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3380 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3381 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3382 PDF version</a> or the
3383 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3384 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3385 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3386
3387 <p>To learn more, check out
3388 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3389 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3390 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3391 manual on the wiki</a> and
3392 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3393 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3394
3395       </div>
3396       <div class="tags">
3397
3398
3399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3400
3401
3402       </div>
3403     </div>
3404     <div class="padding"></div>
3405
3406     <div class="entry">
3407       <div class="title">
3408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
3409       </div>
3410       <div class="date">
3411         29th May 2014
3412       </div>
3413       <div class="body">
3414         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
3415 in my car, connected to
3416 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
3417 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
3418 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
3419 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
3420 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
3421 such car computer.</p>
3422
3423 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
3424
3425 <ul>
3426
3427  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
3428
3429  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
3430    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
3431    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
3432    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
3433    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
3434
3435  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
3436    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
3437    route.</li>
3438
3439  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
3440
3441  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
3442    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
3443    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
3444    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
3445    connection do not work.</li>
3446
3447  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
3448    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
3449
3450  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
3451    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
3452
3453  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
3454    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
3455
3456 </ul>
3457
3458 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
3459 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
3460
3461       </div>
3462       <div class="tags">
3463
3464
3465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3466
3467
3468       </div>
3469     </div>
3470     <div class="padding"></div>
3471
3472     <div class="entry">
3473       <div class="title">
3474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
3475       </div>
3476       <div class="date">
3477         29th April 2014
3478       </div>
3479       <div class="body">
3480         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
3481 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
3482 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
3483 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
3484 newer AVM2 format - see
3485 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
3486 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
3487 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
3488 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
3489 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
3490 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
3491 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
3492 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
3493 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
3494 sites do not work yet.</p>
3495
3496 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
3497 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
3498 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
3499 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
3500 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
3501 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
3502 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
3503 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
3504 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
3505 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
3506 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
3507
3508 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
3509 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
3510 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
3511 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
3512 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
3513 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
3514 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
3515
3516 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
3517 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
3518 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
3519 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
3520 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
3521
3522       </div>
3523       <div class="tags">
3524
3525
3526         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>.
3527
3528
3529       </div>
3530     </div>
3531     <div class="padding"></div>
3532
3533     <div class="entry">
3534       <div class="title">
3535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
3536       </div>
3537       <div class="date">
3538         23rd April 2014
3539       </div>
3540       <div class="body">
3541         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3542 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3543 So I implemented one, using
3544 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3545 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3546 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3547 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3548 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3549 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3550
3551 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3552 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3553 packages to install.  The first part is in
3554 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3555 this:</p>
3556
3557 <p><blockquote><pre>
3558 Task: isenkram
3559 Section: hardware
3560 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3561  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3562  proposed.
3563 Test-new-install: mark show
3564 Relevance: 8
3565 Packages: for-current-hardware
3566 </pre></blockquote></p>
3567
3568 <p>The second part is in
3569 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3570 this:</p>
3571
3572 <p><blockquote><pre>
3573 #!/bin/sh
3574 #
3575 (
3576     isenkram-lookup
3577     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3578 ) | sort -u
3579 </pre></blockquote></p>
3580
3581 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3582 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3583 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3584 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3585 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3586 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3587
3588 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3589 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3590 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3591 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3592 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3593 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3594 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3595 the python-apt code (bug
3596 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3597 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3598 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3599 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3600 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3601 unstable today.</p>
3602
3603 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3604 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3605 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3606 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3607 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3608 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3609 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3610 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3611 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3612
3613 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3614 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3615 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3616 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3617 package.  See also
3618 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3619 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3620 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3621 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3622
3623       </div>
3624       <div class="tags">
3625
3626
3627         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>.
3628
3629
3630       </div>
3631     </div>
3632     <div class="padding"></div>
3633
3634     <div class="entry">
3635       <div class="title">
3636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="date">
3639         15th April 2014
3640       </div>
3641       <div class="body">
3642         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3643 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3644 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3645 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3646 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3647 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3648
3649 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3650 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3651 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3652 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3653 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3654 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3655 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3656
3657 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3658 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3659 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3660 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3661 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3662 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3663 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3664 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3665 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3666 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3667 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3668 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3669
3670 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3671 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3672 become root:</p>
3673
3674 <p><pre>
3675 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3676   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3677   u-boot-tools
3678 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3679   freedom-maker
3680 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3681 </pre></p>
3682
3683 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3684 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3685 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3686 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3687 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3688 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3689 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3690 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3691
3692 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3693 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3694 the preseed values:</p>
3695
3696 <p><pre>
3697 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3698 </pre></p>
3699
3700 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3701 it still work.</p>
3702
3703 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3704 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3705 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3706 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3707 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3708 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3709 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3710
3711 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3712 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3713 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3714 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3715 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3716 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3717
3718       </div>
3719       <div class="tags">
3720
3721
3722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3723
3724
3725       </div>
3726     </div>
3727     <div class="padding"></div>
3728
3729     <div class="entry">
3730       <div class="title">
3731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
3732       </div>
3733       <div class="date">
3734          9th April 2014
3735       </div>
3736       <div class="body">
3737         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3738 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3739 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3740 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3741 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3742 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3743 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3744 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3745 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3746 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
3747 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
3748 have looked at a system called
3749 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
3750 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
3751
3752 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
3753 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
3754 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
3755 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
3756 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3757 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3758 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3759 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3760 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3761 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3762 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3763 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3764 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3765
3766 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3767 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3768 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3769 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3770 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3771 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3772 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3773 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3774 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3775 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3776 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3777 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3778 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3779 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3780 account.</p>
3781
3782 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3783 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3784 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3785 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
3786 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
3787 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
3788 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
3789
3790 <p><blockquote><pre>
3791 [s3c]
3792 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3793 backend-login: API-login
3794 backend-password: API-password
3795 fs-passphrase: local-password
3796 </pre></blockquote></p>
3797
3798 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
3799 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
3800 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
3801 details and password to create it:</p>
3802
3803 <p><blockquote><pre>
3804 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
3805 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3806   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3807 Enter backend login:
3808 Enter backend password:
3809 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
3810 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
3811 Enter encryption password:
3812 Confirm encryption password:
3813 Generating random encryption key...
3814 Creating metadata tables...
3815 Dumping metadata...
3816 ..objects..
3817 ..blocks..
3818 ..inodes..
3819 ..inode_blocks..
3820 ..symlink_targets..
3821 ..names..
3822 ..contents..
3823 ..ext_attributes..
3824 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3825 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
3826 # </pre></blockquote></p>
3827
3828 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
3829
3830 <p><blockquote><pre>
3831 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3832   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3833 Using 4 upload threads.
3834 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
3835 Reading metadata...
3836 ..objects..
3837 ..blocks..
3838 ..inodes..
3839 ..inode_blocks..
3840 ..symlink_targets..
3841 ..names..
3842 ..contents..
3843 ..ext_attributes..
3844 Mounting filesystem...
3845 # df -h /s3ql
3846 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
3847 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
3848 #
3849 </pre></blockquote></p>
3850
3851 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
3852 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
3853 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
3854 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
3855 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
3856 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
3857
3858 <p><blockquote><pre>
3859 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
3860 #
3861 </pre></blockquote></p>
3862
3863 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
3864 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
3865 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
3866 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
3867 file system:</p>
3868
3869 <p><blockquote><pre>
3870 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3871 Using cached metadata.
3872 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
3873 Checking DB integrity...
3874 Creating temporary extra indices...
3875 Checking lost+found...
3876 Checking cached objects...
3877 Checking names (refcounts)...
3878 Checking contents (names)...
3879 Checking contents (inodes)...
3880 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
3881 Checking objects (reference counts)...
3882 Checking objects (backend)...
3883 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
3884 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
3885 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
3886 Checking objects (sizes)...
3887 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
3888 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
3889 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
3890 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
3891 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
3892 Checking inodes (sizes)...
3893 Checking extended attributes (names)...
3894 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
3895 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
3896 Checking directory reachability...
3897 Checking unix conventions...
3898 Checking referential integrity...
3899 Dropping temporary indices...
3900 Backing up old metadata...
3901 Dumping metadata...
3902 ..objects..
3903 ..blocks..
3904 ..inodes..
3905 ..inode_blocks..
3906 ..symlink_targets..
3907 ..names..
3908 ..contents..
3909 ..ext_attributes..
3910 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3911 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
3912 #
3913 </pre></blockquote></p>
3914
3915 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
3916 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
3917 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
3918 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
3919 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
3920 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
3921 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
3922 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
3923 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
3924 working set.</p>
3925
3926 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
3927 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
3928 busy:</p>
3929
3930 <p><blockquote><pre>
3931 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3932   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3933 Using 8 upload threads.
3934 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
3935 #
3936 </pre></blockquote></p>
3937
3938 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
3939 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
3940 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
3941 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
3942 s3qlctrl:
3943
3944 <p><blockquote><pre>
3945 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
3946 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
3947 #
3948 </pre></blockquote></p>
3949
3950 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
3951 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
3952 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
3953 a report:</p>
3954
3955 <p><blockquote><pre>
3956 # s3qlstat /s3ql
3957 Directory entries:    9141
3958 Inodes:               9143
3959 Data blocks:          8851
3960 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
3961 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
3962 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
3963 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
3964 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
3965 #
3966 </pre></blockquote></p>
3967
3968 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
3969 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
3970 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
3971 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
3972 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
3973 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
3974 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
3975 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
3976 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
3977 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
3978 best.</p>
3979
3980 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
3981 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
3982 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
3983 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
3984 poster is titled
3985 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
3986 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
3987 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
3988 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
3989 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
3990
3991 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
3992 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
3993 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
3994 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
3995 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
3996 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
3997 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
3998 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
3999
4000 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4001 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4002 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4003 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4004 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4005 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4006 only read from it.</p>
4007
4008 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4009 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4010 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4011
4012       </div>
4013       <div class="tags">
4014
4015
4016         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4017
4018
4019       </div>
4020     </div>
4021     <div class="padding"></div>
4022
4023     <div class="entry">
4024       <div class="title">
4025         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4026       </div>
4027       <div class="date">
4028          1st April 2014
4029       </div>
4030       <div class="body">
4031         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4032 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4033 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4034 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4035 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4036 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4037 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4038 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4039 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4040 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4041 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4042 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4043 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4044
4045 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4046 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4047 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4048 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4049 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4050 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4051 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4052 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4053 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4054 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4055 Linux.</p>
4056
4057 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4058 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4059 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4060 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4061 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4062 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4063 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4064 Windows before metro).</p>
4065
4066 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4067 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4068 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4069 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4070 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4071 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4072 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4073 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4074 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4075 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4076 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4077 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4078 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4079 image.</p>
4080
4081       </div>
4082       <div class="tags">
4083
4084
4085         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
4086
4087
4088       </div>
4089     </div>
4090     <div class="padding"></div>
4091
4092     <div class="entry">
4093       <div class="title">
4094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4095       </div>
4096       <div class="date">
4097         30th March 2014
4098       </div>
4099       <div class="body">
4100         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4101 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4102 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4103 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4104 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4105
4106 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4107
4108 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4109 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4110 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4111 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4112 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4113
4114 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4115 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4116 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4117
4118 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4119 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4120 hunger.</p>
4121
4122 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4123 project?</strong></p>
4124
4125 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4126 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4127 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4128 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4129 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4130 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4131 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4132 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4133 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4134 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4135
4136 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4137 Edu?</strong></p>
4138
4139 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4140 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4141 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4142 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4143 be made of steel.</p>
4144
4145 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4146 Edu?</strong></p>
4147
4148 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4149
4150 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4151 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4152 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4153 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4154 or dropped.</p>
4155
4156 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4157 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4158 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4159 discourage many people too.</p>
4160
4161 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4162
4163 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4164 Virtualbox.</p>
4165
4166
4167 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4168 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4169
4170 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4171 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4172 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4173 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4174 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4175 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4176 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4177 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4178 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4179
4180       </div>
4181       <div class="tags">
4182
4183
4184         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>.
4185
4186
4187       </div>
4188     </div>
4189     <div class="padding"></div>
4190
4191     <div class="entry">
4192       <div class="title">
4193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4194       </div>
4195       <div class="date">
4196         25th March 2014
4197       </div>
4198       <div class="body">
4199         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4200 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4201 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4202 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4203 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4204 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4205 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4206 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4207 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4208
4209 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4210 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4211 looked a given way.  Such
4212 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4213 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4214 called a
4215 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4216 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4217 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4218 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4219 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4220 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4221 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4222 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4223 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4224 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4225 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4226 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4227 There are several commercial services around providing such
4228 timestamping.  A quick search for
4229 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4230 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4231 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4232 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4233 Vadis</a>,
4234 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4235 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
4236 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
4237 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
4238
4239 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
4240 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
4241 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
4242 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
4243 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
4244 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
4245 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
4246 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
4247 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
4248 Greifswald.</p>
4249
4250 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
4251 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
4252 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
4253 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
4254 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
4255
4256 <p><blockquote><pre>
4257 #!/bin/sh
4258 set -e
4259 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
4260 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
4261 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
4262 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
4263 cafile=chain.txt
4264 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
4265     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
4266 fi
4267 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
4268     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
4269 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
4270 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
4271 base64 < "$resfile"
4272 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
4273 </pre></blockquote></p>
4274
4275 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
4276 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
4277 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
4278 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
4279 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
4280 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
4281 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
4282 changed.</p>
4283
4284 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
4285 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
4286 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
4287 to set up?</p>
4288
4289       </div>
4290       <div class="tags">
4291
4292
4293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4294
4295
4296       </div>
4297     </div>
4298     <div class="padding"></div>
4299
4300     <div class="entry">
4301       <div class="title">
4302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
4303       </div>
4304       <div class="date">
4305         21st March 2014
4306       </div>
4307       <div class="body">
4308         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
4309 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
4310 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
4311 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
4312 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
4313 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
4314 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
4315
4316 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
4317 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
4318 tried using
4319 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
4320 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
4321 and program
4322 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
4323 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
4324 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
4325 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
4326 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
4327 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
4328 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
4329 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
4330 this method.</p>
4331
4332 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
4333 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
4334 problem is
4335 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
4336 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
4337 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
4338 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
4339 DVD structures, as the python library
4340 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
4341 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
4342 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
4343 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
4344 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
4345 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
4346
4347 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
4348 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
4349
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="tags">
4352
4353
4354         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4355
4356
4357       </div>
4358     </div>
4359     <div class="padding"></div>
4360
4361     <div class="entry">
4362       <div class="title">
4363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
4364       </div>
4365       <div class="date">
4366         14th March 2014
4367       </div>
4368       <div class="body">
4369         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4370 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4371 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4372 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4373 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4374 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4375 release (0.2).</p>
4376
4377 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4378 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4379 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4380 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4381 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4382 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4383 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4384 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4385 and build using
4386 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4387 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4388
4389 <pre>
4390 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4391   freedom-maker
4392 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4393   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4394   u-boot-tools
4395 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4396 </pre>
4397
4398 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4399 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4400 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4401 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4402 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4403 kpartx call.</p>
4404
4405 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4406 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4407 the preseed values:</p>
4408
4409 <pre>
4410 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4411 </pre>
4412
4413 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4414 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4415 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4416 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4417 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4418 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4419
4420 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4421 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4422 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4423 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4424 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4425 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4426
4427       </div>
4428       <div class="tags">
4429
4430
4431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4432
4433
4434       </div>
4435     </div>
4436     <div class="padding"></div>
4437
4438     <div class="entry">
4439       <div class="title">
4440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4441       </div>
4442       <div class="date">
4443         12th March 2014
4444       </div>
4445       <div class="body">
4446         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
4447 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
4448 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
4449 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
4450 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
4451 document this better when one of the customers of
4452 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
4453 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
4454 get this working are the following:</p>
4455
4456 <p><ol>
4457
4458 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
4459 example host here.</li>
4460
4461 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
4462 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
4463
4464 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
4465 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
4466
4467 </ol></p>
4468
4469 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
4470 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
4471 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
4472 started).</p>
4473
4474 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
4475 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
4476
4477 <p><blockquote><pre>
4478 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
4479 Export list for nas-server:
4480 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
4481 root@tjener:~#
4482 </pre></blockquote></p>
4483
4484 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
4485 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
4486 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
4487 NFS access.</p>
4488
4489 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
4490 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
4491 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
4492
4493 <p><blockquote><pre>
4494 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4495 </pre></blockquote></p>
4496
4497 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
4498 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
4499 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
4500 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
4501
4502 <p><blockquote><pre>
4503 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4504 objectClass: automount
4505 cn: nas-server
4506 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4507
4508 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4509 objectClass: top
4510 objectClass: automountMap
4511 ou: auto.nas-server
4512
4513 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4514 objectClass: automount
4515 cn: /
4516 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
4517 </pre></blockquote></p>
4518
4519 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
4520 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
4521 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
4522
4523 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
4524 the storage server directly by just visiting the
4525 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
4526 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
4527
4528       </div>
4529       <div class="tags">
4530
4531
4532         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>.
4533
4534
4535       </div>
4536     </div>
4537     <div class="padding"></div>
4538
4539     <div class="entry">
4540       <div class="title">
4541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
4542       </div>
4543       <div class="date">
4544         22nd February 2014
4545       </div>
4546       <div class="body">
4547         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4548 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4549 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4550 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4551 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4552 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4553 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4554 proper home since then.</p>
4555
4556 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4557 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4558 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4559 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4560 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4561
4562 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4563 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4564 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4565 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4566 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4567 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4568 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4569 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4570 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4571
4572       </div>
4573       <div class="tags">
4574
4575
4576         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>.
4577
4578
4579       </div>
4580     </div>
4581     <div class="padding"></div>
4582
4583     <div class="entry">
4584       <div class="title">
4585         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4586       </div>
4587       <div class="date">
4588          3rd February 2014
4589       </div>
4590       <div class="body">
4591         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4592 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4593 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4594 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4595 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4596 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4597 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4598 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
4599 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4600
4601 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4602 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4603 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4604 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4605 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4606 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4607
4608 <p><blockquote><pre>
4609 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4610 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4611 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4612 dhclient /dev/eth0
4613 </pre></blockquote></p>
4614
4615 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4616 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4617 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4618
4619 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4620 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4621 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4622 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4623 side.</p>
4624
4625 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4626 stuff:</p>
4627
4628 <p><blockquote><pre>
4629 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4630 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4631 EOF
4632 apt-get update
4633 apt-get dist-upgrade
4634 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4635     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4636 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4637 </pre></blockquote></p>
4638
4639 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4640 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4641 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4642 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4643 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4644 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4645 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4646 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4647 ssh instead.
4648
4649 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4650 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4651 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4652 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4653 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4654 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4655
4656 <p><blockquote><pre>
4657 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4658 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4659 EOF
4660 </pre></blockquote></p>
4661
4662 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4663 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4664 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4665 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4666
4667 <p><blockquote><pre>
4668 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4669 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4670 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4671 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4672 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4673 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4674 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4675 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4676 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4677 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4678 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4679 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4680 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4681 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4682 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4683 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4684 #
4685 </pre></blockquote></p>
4686
4687 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4688 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4689 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4690 command line stuff.<p>
4691
4692       </div>
4693       <div class="tags">
4694
4695
4696         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>.
4697
4698
4699       </div>
4700     </div>
4701     <div class="padding"></div>
4702
4703     <div class="entry">
4704       <div class="title">
4705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
4706       </div>
4707       <div class="date">
4708         29th January 2014
4709       </div>
4710       <div class="body">
4711         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
4712 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
4713 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
4714 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
4715 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
4716 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
4717 investigated in
4718 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
4719 from December 2013, in the article
4720 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
4721 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
4722 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
4723 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
4724 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
4725 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
4726 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
4727 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
4728
4729 <p><blockquote>
4730 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
4731 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
4732 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
4733 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
4734 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
4735 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
4736 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
4737 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
4738 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
4739 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
4740 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
4741 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
4742
4743 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
4744 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
4745 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
4746 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
4747 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
4748 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
4749 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
4750 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
4751 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
4752 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
4753 </blockquote><p>
4754
4755 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
4756 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
4757 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
4758 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
4759 summarized like this:</p>
4760
4761 <p><blockquote>
4762 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
4763 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
4764 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
4765 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
4766 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
4767 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
4768 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
4769 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
4770 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
4771 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
4772 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
4773 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
4774 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
4775 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
4776 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
4777 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
4778 </blockquote></p>
4779
4780 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
4781 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
4782 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
4783 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
4784
4785 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4786 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4787 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4788
4789       </div>
4790       <div class="tags">
4791
4792
4793         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
4794
4795
4796       </div>
4797     </div>
4798     <div class="padding"></div>
4799
4800     <div class="entry">
4801       <div class="title">
4802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="date">
4805         14th January 2014
4806       </div>
4807       <div class="body">
4808         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
4809 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
4810 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
4811 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
4812 the source.  The company behind it provide
4813 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
4814 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
4815 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
4816 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
4817 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
4818 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
4819 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
4820 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
4821 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
4822 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
4823 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
4824 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
4825 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
4826 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
4827 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
4828 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
4829 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
4830 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
4831 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
4832
4833 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
4834
4835 <ul>
4836
4837   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
4838   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
4839   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
4840
4841 </ul>
4842
4843 <p>You can
4844 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4845 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4846 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4847 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4848 include a test suite check.</p>
4849
4850       </div>
4851       <div class="tags">
4852
4853
4854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4855
4856
4857       </div>
4858     </div>
4859     <div class="padding"></div>
4860
4861     <div class="entry">
4862       <div class="title">
4863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
4864       </div>
4865       <div class="date">
4866         25th December 2013
4867       </div>
4868       <div class="body">
4869         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4870 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
4871 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
4872 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
4873 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
4874 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
4875 George</a>.</p>
4876
4877 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
4878
4879 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4880
4881 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
4882 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
4883 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
4884 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
4885 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
4886 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
4887
4888 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
4889 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
4890 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
4891 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
4892 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
4893 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
4894 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
4895 to help building another school's informational education concept from
4896 scratch.</p>
4897
4898 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
4899 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
4900 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
4901
4902 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
4903 and cycling.</p>
4904
4905 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4906 project?</strong></p>
4907
4908 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
4909 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
4910 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
4911 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
4912 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
4913 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
4914
4915 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
4916 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
4917 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
4918 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
4919 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
4920 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
4921 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
4922 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
4923 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
4924
4925 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
4926 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
4927 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
4928 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
4929
4930 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4931 Edu?</strong></p>
4932
4933 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
4934 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
4935 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
4936 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
4937 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
4938 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
4939 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
4940 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
4941 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
4942 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
4943 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
4944 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
4945 that it rocks!</p>
4946
4947 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
4948 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
4949 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
4950 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
4951 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
4952 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
4953 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
4954
4955 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4956 Edu?</strong></p>
4957
4958 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
4959 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
4960 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
4961 can list a few points about that:</p>
4962
4963 <ul>
4964
4965  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
4966  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
4967  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
4968
4969 </ul>
4970
4971 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
4972
4973 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4974
4975 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
4976 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
4977 year.</p>
4978
4979 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
4980 run text tools. I use
4981 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
4982 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
4983 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
4984 based full-featured student management software with the two),
4985 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
4986 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
4987 coloured world called the WWW, I use
4988 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
4989 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
4990 e-mail.</p>
4991
4992 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
4993 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
4994 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
4995 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
4996 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
4997 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
4998 Facebook now ;).</p>
4999
5000 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5001 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5002
5003 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5004 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5005
5006 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5007 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5008 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5009 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5010 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5011 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5012 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5013 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5014 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5015 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5016 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5017 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5018 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5019 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5020 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5021 plain criminal.</p>
5022
5023 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5024 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5025 founded an association named
5026 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5027 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5028 area of free and open source software, for example the
5029 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5030 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5031 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5032 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5033 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5034 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5035 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5036 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5037
5038 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5039 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5040 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5041 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5042 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5043 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5044 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5045 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5046 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5047 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5048 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5049 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5050
5051 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5052 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5053 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5054 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5055
5056 <!--
5057
5058 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5059
5060 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5061 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5062
5063  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5064    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5065    of the decision makers above;
5066  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5067    knowledge about free software
5068
5069 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5070
5071 -->
5072
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="tags">
5075
5076
5077         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>.
5078
5079
5080       </div>
5081     </div>
5082     <div class="padding"></div>
5083
5084     <div class="entry">
5085       <div class="title">
5086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5087       </div>
5088       <div class="date">
5089          6th December 2013
5090       </div>
5091       <div class="body">
5092         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5093 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5094 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5095 had a new school administrator show up on
5096 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5097 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5098 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5099 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5100 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5101
5102 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5103
5104 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5105 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5106 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5107 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5108
5109 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5110 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5111 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5112 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5113 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5114 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5115 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5116 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5117 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5118
5119 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5120 project?</strong></p>
5121
5122 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5123 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5124 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5125 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5126
5127 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5128 Edu?</strong></p>
5129
5130 <ul>
5131   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5132   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5133   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5134   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5135     single company,</li>
5136   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5137     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5138 </ul>
5139
5140 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5141 Edu?</strong></p>
5142
5143 <ul>
5144   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5145   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5146   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5147   working again reliably.
5148
5149   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5150   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5151   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5152   as their base.
5153
5154   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5155   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5156   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5157   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5158   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5159   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5160
5161   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5162   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5163   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5164   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5165   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5166   schemes.</li>
5167
5168   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5169   compared to Debian.</li>
5170
5171 </ul>
5172
5173 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5174 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5175 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5176 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5177
5178 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5179
5180 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5181 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5182 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5183 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5184
5185 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5186 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5187
5188 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5189
5190 <ul>
5191
5192   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5193     teaching and learning.</li>
5194
5195   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5196     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5197     conversion problems.</li>
5198
5199   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5200     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5201     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5202     science, not products.</li>
5203
5204   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5205     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5206
5207 </ul>
5208
5209       </div>
5210       <div class="tags">
5211
5212
5213         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>.
5214
5215
5216       </div>
5217     </div>
5218     <div class="padding"></div>
5219
5220     <div class="entry">
5221       <div class="title">
5222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
5223       </div>
5224       <div class="date">
5225         30th November 2013
5226       </div>
5227       <div class="body">
5228         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5229 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5230 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5231 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5232 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5233 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5234 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5235 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
5236 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
5237 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
5238 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
5239 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
5240 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
5241 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
5242 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
5243 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
5244 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
5245 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
5246 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
5247 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
5248
5249       </div>
5250       <div class="tags">
5251
5252
5253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5254
5255
5256       </div>
5257     </div>
5258     <div class="padding"></div>
5259
5260     <div class="entry">
5261       <div class="title">
5262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5263       </div>
5264       <div class="date">
5265         24th November 2013
5266       </div>
5267       <div class="body">
5268         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5269 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5270 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5271 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5272 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5273 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5274 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5275 is working on.  I checked the
5276 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5277 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5278 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5279 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5280 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5281 These are the release notes:</p>
5282
5283 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5284
5285 <ul>
5286
5287   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5288    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5289    up.</li>
5290
5291   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
5292
5293   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5294    Matthias Klose.</li>
5295
5296   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5297    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
5298
5299   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5300    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
5301    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
5302
5303 </ul>
5304
5305 <p>You can
5306 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5307 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5308 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5309 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5310 include a testsuite check.</p>
5311
5312       </div>
5313       <div class="tags">
5314
5315
5316         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5317
5318
5319       </div>
5320     </div>
5321     <div class="padding"></div>
5322
5323     <div class="entry">
5324       <div class="title">
5325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
5326       </div>
5327       <div class="date">
5328         21st November 2013
5329       </div>
5330       <div class="body">
5331         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
5332 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
5333 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
5334 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
5335 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
5336 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
5337 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
5338 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
5339 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
5340 TED talk
5341 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
5342 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
5343 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
5344
5345 <blockquote>
5346
5347 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
5348 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
5349 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
5350 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
5351 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
5352 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
5353 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
5354 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
5355 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
5356 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
5357 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
5358
5359 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
5360 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
5361 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
5362
5363 </blockquote>
5364
5365 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
5366 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
5367 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
5368 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
5369 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
5370 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
5371 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
5372 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
5373 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
5374
5375       </div>
5376       <div class="tags">
5377
5378
5379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</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>.
5380
5381
5382       </div>
5383     </div>
5384     <div class="padding"></div>
5385
5386     <div class="entry">
5387       <div class="title">
5388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
5389       </div>
5390       <div class="date">
5391         13th November 2013
5392       </div>
5393       <div class="body">
5394         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
5395 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
5396 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
5397 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
5398 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
5399 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
5400 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
5401 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
5402 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
5403 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
5404 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
5405 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5406 right away. :)</p>
5407
5408       </div>
5409       <div class="tags">
5410
5411
5412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5413
5414
5415       </div>
5416     </div>
5417     <div class="padding"></div>
5418
5419     <div class="entry">
5420       <div class="title">
5421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
5422       </div>
5423       <div class="date">
5424         10th November 2013
5425       </div>
5426       <div class="body">
5427         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
5428 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
5429 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
5430 MR3040 as a mesh node using
5431 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
5432
5433 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
5434 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
5435 and downloaded
5436 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
5437 recommended firmware image</a>
5438 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
5439 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
5440 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
5441 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
5442 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
5443
5444 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
5445 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
5446 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
5447 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
5448 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
5449 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
5450 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
5451 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
5452 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
5453 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
5454 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
5455 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
5456 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
5457
5458 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
5459 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
5460 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
5461 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
5462 them:</p>
5463
5464 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
5465
5466 <pre>
5467
5468 config interface 'loopback'
5469         option ifname 'lo'
5470         option proto 'static'
5471         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
5472         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
5473
5474 config globals 'globals'
5475         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
5476
5477 config interface 'lan'
5478         option ifname 'eth0'
5479         option type 'bridge'
5480         option proto 'dhcp'
5481         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
5482         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
5483         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
5484         option ip6assign '60'
5485
5486 config interface 'mesh'
5487         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5488         option mtu '1528'
5489         option proto 'batadv'
5490         option mesh 'bat0'
5491 </pre>
5492
5493 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
5494 <pre>
5495
5496 config wifi-device 'radio0'
5497         option type 'mac80211'
5498         option channel '11'
5499         option hwmode '11ng'
5500         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
5501         option htmode 'HT20'
5502         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
5503         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
5504         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
5505         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
5506         option disabled '0'
5507
5508 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
5509         option device 'radio0'
5510         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5511         option network 'mesh'
5512         option encryption 'none'
5513         option mode 'adhoc'
5514         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
5515         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
5516 </pre>
5517 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
5518 <pre>
5519
5520 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
5521         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
5522         option 'aggregated_ogms'
5523         option 'ap_isolation'
5524         option 'bonding'
5525         option 'fragmentation'
5526         option 'gw_bandwidth'
5527         option 'gw_mode'
5528         option 'gw_sel_class'
5529         option 'log_level'
5530         option 'orig_interval'
5531         option 'vis_mode'
5532         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
5533         option 'distributed_arp_table'
5534         option 'network_coding'
5535         option 'hop_penalty'
5536
5537 # yet another batX instance
5538 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
5539 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
5540 </pre>
5541
5542 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
5543 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
5544 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
5545
5546       </div>
5547       <div class="tags">
5548
5549
5550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5551
5552
5553       </div>
5554     </div>
5555     <div class="padding"></div>
5556
5557     <div class="entry">
5558       <div class="title">
5559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
5560       </div>
5561       <div class="date">
5562          2nd November 2013
5563       </div>
5564       <div class="body">
5565         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5566 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5567 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5568 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5569 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
5570
5571 <p><pre>
5572 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5573 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
5574 # Provides:          rsyslog
5575 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
5576 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
5577 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
5578 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
5579 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
5580 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5581 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5582 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5583 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5584 ### END INIT INFO
5585 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5586 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5587 </pre></p>
5588
5589 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5590 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5591 info/comments.</p>
5592
5593 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5594 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5595
5596 <p><pre>
5597 #!/bin/sh
5598
5599 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5600 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5601 # and status_of_proc is working.
5602 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5603
5604 #
5605 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5606
5607 #
5608 do_start()
5609 {
5610         # Return
5611         #   0 if daemon has been started
5612         #   1 if daemon was already running
5613         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5614         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5615                 || return 1
5616         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5617                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5618                 || return 2
5619         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5620         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5621         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5622 }
5623
5624 #
5625 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5626 #
5627 do_stop()
5628 {
5629         # Return
5630         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5631         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5632         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5633         #   other if a failure occurred
5634         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5635         RETVAL="$?"
5636         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5637         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5638         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5639         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5640         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5641         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5642         # sleep for some time.
5643         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5644         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5645         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5646         rm -f $PIDFILE
5647         return "$RETVAL"
5648 }
5649
5650 #
5651 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5652 #
5653 do_reload() {
5654         #
5655         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5656         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5657         # then implement that here.
5658         #
5659         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5660         return 0
5661 }
5662
5663 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5664 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5665 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5666 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5667     script="$1"
5668     shift
5669     . $script
5670 else
5671     exit 0
5672 fi
5673
5674 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5675 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5676
5677 # Exit if the package is not installed
5678 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5679
5680 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5681 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5682
5683 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5684 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5685
5686 case "$1" in
5687   start)
5688         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5689         do_start
5690         case "$?" in
5691                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5692                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5693         esac
5694         ;;
5695   stop)
5696         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5697         do_stop
5698         case "$?" in
5699                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5700                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5701         esac
5702         ;;
5703   status)
5704         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5705         ;;
5706   #reload|force-reload)
5707         #
5708         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5709         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5710         #
5711         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5712         #do_reload
5713         #log_end_msg $?
5714         #;;
5715   restart|force-reload)
5716         #
5717         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5718         # 'force-reload' alias
5719         #
5720         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5721         do_stop
5722         case "$?" in
5723           0|1)
5724                 do_start
5725                 case "$?" in
5726                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
5727                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
5728                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
5729                 esac
5730                 ;;
5731           *)
5732                 # Failed to stop
5733                 log_end_msg 1
5734                 ;;
5735         esac
5736         ;;
5737   *)
5738         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
5739         exit 3
5740         ;;
5741 esac
5742
5743 :
5744 </pre></p>
5745
5746 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
5747 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
5748 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
5749 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
5750
5751 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
5752 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
5753 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
5754 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
5755 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
5756
5757       </div>
5758       <div class="tags">
5759
5760
5761         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>.
5762
5763
5764       </div>
5765     </div>
5766     <div class="padding"></div>
5767
5768     <div class="entry">
5769       <div class="title">
5770         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
5771       </div>
5772       <div class="date">
5773          1st November 2013
5774       </div>
5775       <div class="body">
5776         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
5777 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5778 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5779 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5780 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5781 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
5782 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5783 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5784 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
5785 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
5786 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
5787 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
5788
5789 <p>The source is now available from
5790 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
5791
5792       </div>
5793       <div class="tags">
5794
5795
5796         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>.
5797
5798
5799       </div>
5800     </div>
5801     <div class="padding"></div>
5802
5803     <div class="entry">
5804       <div class="title">
5805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
5806       </div>
5807       <div class="date">
5808         27th October 2013
5809       </div>
5810       <div class="body">
5811         <p>The
5812 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
5813 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
5814 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
5815 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
5816 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
5817 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
5818 of a plan to simplify the build system for
5819 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
5820 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
5821 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
5822 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
5823 Raspberry Pi.</p>
5824
5825 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
5826 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
5827 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
5828 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
5829 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
5830 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
5831 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
5832 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
5833 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
5834 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
5835 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
5836 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
5837 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
5838 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
5839 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
5840 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
5841 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
5842 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
5843 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
5844 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
5845 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
5846 available from
5847 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
5848 upstream project page</a>.</p>
5849
5850 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
5851 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
5852 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
5853 list:</p>
5854
5855 <p><pre>
5856 #!/bin/sh
5857 set -e # Exit on first error
5858 rootdir="$1"
5859 cd "$rootdir"
5860 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
5861 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
5862 EOF
5863 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
5864 # install a kernel somewhere too.
5865 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
5866     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5867 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5868 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
5869 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
5870 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
5871 </pre></p>
5872
5873 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
5874 to build the image:</p>
5875
5876 <pre>
5877 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
5878     --variant minbase \
5879     --arch armel \
5880     --distribution jessie \
5881     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
5882     --image test.img \
5883     --size 600M \
5884     --bootsize 64M \
5885     --boottype vfat \
5886     --log-level debug \
5887     --verbose \
5888     --no-kernel \
5889     --no-extlinux \
5890     --root-password raspberry \
5891     --hostname raspberrypi \
5892     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
5893     --customize `pwd`/customize \
5894     --package netbase \
5895     --package git-core \
5896     --package binutils \
5897     --package ca-certificates \
5898     --package wget \
5899     --package kmod
5900 </pre></p>
5901
5902 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
5903 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
5904 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
5905 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
5906 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
5907 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
5908 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
5909
5910 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
5911 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
5912 build dependency list.</p>
5913
5914 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
5915 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
5916 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
5917 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
5918
5919       </div>
5920       <div class="tags">
5921
5922
5923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
5924
5925
5926       </div>
5927     </div>
5928     <div class="padding"></div>
5929
5930     <div class="entry">
5931       <div class="title">
5932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
5933       </div>
5934       <div class="date">
5935         21st October 2013
5936       </div>
5937       <div class="body">
5938         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
5939 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
5940 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
5941 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
5942 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
5943 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
5944 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
5945 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
5946
5947 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
5948 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
5949 instead, I started playing with a
5950 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
5951 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
5952 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
5953 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
5954 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
5955 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
5956 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
5957 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
5958 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
5959 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
5960 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
5961 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
5962 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
5963 every client on the local network.</p>
5964
5965 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
5966 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
5967 and a script
5968 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
5969 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
5970 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
5971 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
5972 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
5973 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
5974 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
5975 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
5976 support.</p>
5977
5978 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
5979 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
5980
5981 <p><pre>
5982 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
5983     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
5984 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
5985 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
5986 %
5987 </pre></p>
5988
5989 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
5990 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
5991 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
5992 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
5993 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
5994 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
5995
5996 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
5997 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
5998 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
5999
6000 <p><table>
6001
6002 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6003 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6004 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6005 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6006 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6007 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6008
6009 </table></p>
6010
6011 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6012 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6013 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6014 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6015 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6016 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6017 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6018
6019       </div>
6020       <div class="tags">
6021
6022
6023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6024
6025
6026       </div>
6027     </div>
6028     <div class="padding"></div>
6029
6030     <div class="entry">
6031       <div class="title">
6032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
6033       </div>
6034       <div class="date">
6035         19th October 2013
6036       </div>
6037       <div class="body">
6038         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6039 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6040 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6041 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6042 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6043 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6044 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6045 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6046
6047       </div>
6048       <div class="tags">
6049
6050
6051         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>.
6052
6053
6054       </div>
6055     </div>
6056     <div class="padding"></div>
6057
6058     <div class="entry">
6059       <div class="title">
6060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
6061       </div>
6062       <div class="date">
6063         15th October 2013
6064       </div>
6065       <div class="body">
6066         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6067 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6068 these. :)</p>
6069
6070 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6071 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6072 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6073 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6074 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6075 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6076 hope you will to. :)</p>
6077
6078 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6079 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6080 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6081 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6082 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6083
6084 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6085 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6086 statement under the heading
6087 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6088 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6089 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6090 too.</p>
6091
6092       </div>
6093       <div class="tags">
6094
6095
6096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6097
6098
6099       </div>
6100     </div>
6101     <div class="padding"></div>
6102
6103     <div class="entry">
6104       <div class="title">
6105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
6106       </div>
6107       <div class="date">
6108         11th October 2013
6109       </div>
6110       <div class="body">
6111         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6112 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6113 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6114 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6115 successful examples like
6116 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6117 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6118 (see
6119 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6120 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6121 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6122 can be seen from their
6123 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6124 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6125 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6126 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6127 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6128
6129 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6130 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6131 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6132 my recent involvement in
6133 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6134 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6135 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6136 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6137 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6138 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6139 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6140 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6141 important over the years.</p>
6142
6143 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6144 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6145 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6146 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6147 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6148 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6149 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6150 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6151 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6152 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6153 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6154 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6155 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6156 speakers about this talk (from
6157 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6158
6159 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6160
6161 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6162 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6163 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6164 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6165 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6166 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6167 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6168 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6169 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6170 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6171 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6172 that project (from
6173 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6174
6175 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6176
6177 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6178 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6179 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6180 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6181 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6182 based community mesh networks.</p>
6183
6184 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6185 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6186 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6187 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6188 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6189 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6190 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6191 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6192 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6193
6194 <p><table>
6195 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6196 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6197 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6198 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6199 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6200 </table></p>
6201
6202 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6203 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6204 VillageTelco about
6205 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6206 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6207 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6208 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6209 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6210 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6211
6212 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6213 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6214 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6215 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6216
6217 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6218 us on IRC, either channel
6219 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6220 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6221 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6222
6223 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6224 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6225 and Innovation called
6226 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6227 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6228 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6229 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6230 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6231 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6232 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6233 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6234
6235 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
6236 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
6237 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
6238 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
6239 mesh system.</p>
6240
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="tags">
6243
6244
6245         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6246
6247
6248       </div>
6249     </div>
6250     <div class="padding"></div>
6251
6252     <div class="entry">
6253       <div class="title">
6254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="date">
6257          8th October 2013
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="body">
6260         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
6261 Salvador had published a
6262 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
6263 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
6264 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
6265 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
6266 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
6267 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
6268 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
6269 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
6270 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
6271 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
6272 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
6273 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
6274 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
6275 computers without hard drives by installing one central
6276 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
6277
6278 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
6279
6280 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6281
6282 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
6283 me know. :)</p>
6284
6285       </div>
6286       <div class="tags">
6287
6288
6289         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>.
6290
6291
6292       </div>
6293     </div>
6294     <div class="padding"></div>
6295
6296     <div class="entry">
6297       <div class="title">
6298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
6299       </div>
6300       <div class="date">
6301         29th September 2013
6302       </div>
6303       <div class="body">
6304         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
6305 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
6306 complete announcement text can be found at
6307 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
6308 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
6309
6310 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
6311 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
6312 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
6313 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
6314
6315       </div>
6316       <div class="tags">
6317
6318
6319         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>.
6320
6321
6322       </div>
6323     </div>
6324     <div class="padding"></div>
6325
6326     <div class="entry">
6327       <div class="title">
6328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
6329       </div>
6330       <div class="date">
6331         27th September 2013
6332       </div>
6333       <div class="body">
6334         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6335 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6336 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6337 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6338
6339 <ul>
6340
6341 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6342 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6343
6344 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6345 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6346
6347 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6348 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6349 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6350 (Youtube)</li>
6351
6352 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6353 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6354
6355 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6356 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6357
6358 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6359 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6360 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6361
6362 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6363 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6364 (Youtube)</li>
6365
6366 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6367 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6368
6369 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6370 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6371
6372 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6373 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6374 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6375
6376 </ul>
6377
6378 <p>A larger list is available from
6379 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6380 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6381
6382 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6383 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6384 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6385 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6386 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6387 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6388 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6389 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6390 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6391 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6392 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6393
6394       </div>
6395       <div class="tags">
6396
6397
6398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6399
6400
6401       </div>
6402     </div>
6403     <div class="padding"></div>
6404
6405     <div class="entry">
6406       <div class="title">
6407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
6408       </div>
6409       <div class="date">
6410         16th September 2013
6411       </div>
6412       <div class="body">
6413         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6414 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
6415
6416 <blockquote>
6417 <p>Hi,</p>
6418
6419 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
6420 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6421 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
6422
6423 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
6424 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
6425 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
6426 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
6427
6428 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
6429 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
6430
6431 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
6432 compared to beta1:</p>
6433
6434 <ul>
6435
6436 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
6437 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
6438 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
6439 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
6440 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
6441 main server.</li>
6442 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
6443 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
6444 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
6445 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
6446 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
6447
6448 </ul>
6449
6450 <p>Where to get it:</p>
6451
6452 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6453
6454 <ul>
6455 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6456 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6457 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
6458 </ul>
6459
6460 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
6461
6462 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
6463 <ul>
6464 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6465 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6466 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
6467 </ul>
6468
6469 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
6470
6471 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
6472 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
6473 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
6474 as the other isos.</p>
6475
6476 <p>How to report bugs</p>
6477
6478 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
6479 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6480
6481
6482 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
6483
6484 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6485 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6486 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6487 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6488 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6489 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6490 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6491 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6492 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6493 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6494 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6495 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
6496 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6497
6498 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6499 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6500 Squeeze release.</p>
6501
6502 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
6503
6504 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6505 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6506 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6507 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6508 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
6509 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
6510 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
6511 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
6512 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
6513 directory.</p>
6514
6515
6516 <p>cheers,
6517 <br>        Holger</p>
6518 </blockquote>
6519
6520       </div>
6521       <div class="tags">
6522
6523
6524         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>.
6525
6526
6527       </div>
6528     </div>
6529     <div class="padding"></div>
6530
6531     <div class="entry">
6532       <div class="title">
6533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
6534       </div>
6535       <div class="date">
6536         10th September 2013
6537       </div>
6538       <div class="body">
6539         <p>I was introduced to the
6540 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6541 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6542 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6543 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6544 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6545 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6546 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6547 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6548
6549 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6550 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6551 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6552 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6553 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6554
6555 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6556 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6557 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6558 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6559 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6560 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6561 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6562 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6563 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6564 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6565 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6566 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6567 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6568 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6569 missing in Debian).</p>
6570
6571 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6572 scripts
6573 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6574 and a administrative web interface
6575 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6576 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6578 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6579 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6580 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6581 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6582 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6583 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6584 this is really working yet, see
6585 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6586 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6587 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6588 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6589 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6590 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6591 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6592
6593 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6594 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6595 at.</p>
6596
6597 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6598
6599 <ol>
6600
6601 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6602 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6603 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6604 to the Debian installer:<p>
6605 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6606
6607 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6608 install on.</li>
6609
6610 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6611 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6612
6613 </ol>
6614
6615 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6616
6617 <ol>
6618
6619 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6620 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6621 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6622 <pre>
6623 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6624 </pre></li>
6625 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6626 <pre>
6627 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6628    apt-key add -
6629 apt-get update
6630 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6631 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6632 </pre></li>
6633 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6634
6635 </ol>
6636
6637 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6638 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6639 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6640 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6641 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6642
6643 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6644 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6645 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6646 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6647
6648 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6649 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6650 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6651 irc.debian.org and the
6652 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6653 mailing list</a>.</p>
6654
6655 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6656 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6657 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6658 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6659 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6660 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6661
6662       </div>
6663       <div class="tags">
6664
6665
6666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6667
6668
6669       </div>
6670     </div>
6671     <div class="padding"></div>
6672
6673     <div class="entry">
6674       <div class="title">
6675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6676       </div>
6677       <div class="date">
6678         22nd August 2013
6679       </div>
6680       <div class="body">
6681         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6682 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
6683 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
6684
6685 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
6686
6687 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6688 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6689
6690 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6691
6692 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6693 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6694 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6695 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6696 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6697 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6698 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6699 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
6700 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6701 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6702 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6703 desktop contains
6704 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6705 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6706 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6707 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6708
6709 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
6710 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
6711 release.</p>
6712
6713 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6714 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6715 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6716 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6717 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
6718 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
6719 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
6720 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
6721 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
6722 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
6723 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
6724
6725 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6726
6727 <ul>
6728
6729 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
6730     work also without a attached tty.</li>
6731 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
6732     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
6733     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
6734     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
6735     required).</li>
6736
6737 </ul>
6738
6739 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6740
6741 <ul>
6742
6743 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
6744 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
6745 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
6746 stick ISO image.</li>
6747 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
6748 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
6749 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
6750     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
6751     cope with this.</li>
6752 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
6753 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
6754     empty password hashes.</li>
6755 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
6756     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
6757     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
6758
6759 </ul>
6760
6761 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6762
6763 <ul>
6764
6765 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6766     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6767 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
6768     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
6769
6770 </ul>
6771
6772 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6773
6774 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6775
6776 <ul>
6777
6778 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6779
6780 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6781
6782 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
6783
6784 </ul>
6785
6786 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
6787 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
6788
6789 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6790
6791 <ul>
6792
6793 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
6794 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
6795 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
6796
6797 </ul>
6798
6799 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
6800 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
6801
6802
6803 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6804
6805 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6806
6807       </div>
6808       <div class="tags">
6809
6810
6811         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>.
6812
6813
6814       </div>
6815     </div>
6816     <div class="padding"></div>
6817
6818     <div class="entry">
6819       <div class="title">
6820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
6821       </div>
6822       <div class="date">
6823         18th August 2013
6824       </div>
6825       <div class="body">
6826         <p>Earlier, I reported about
6827 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
6828 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
6829 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
6830 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
6831 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
6832 currently on the disk.</p>
6833
6834 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
6835 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
6836 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
6837 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
6838 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
6839 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
6840 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
6841 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
6842 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
6843 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
6844 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
6845 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
6846 the broken disks.</p>
6847
6848       </div>
6849       <div class="tags">
6850
6851
6852         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>.
6853
6854
6855       </div>
6856     </div>
6857     <div class="padding"></div>
6858
6859     <div class="entry">
6860       <div class="title">
6861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
6862       </div>
6863       <div class="date">
6864          2nd August 2013
6865       </div>
6866       <div class="body">
6867         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
6868 have worked on a Norwegian
6869 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6870 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6871 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
6872 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
6873 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
6874 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
6875 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
6876 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
6877 progress of the translation:</p>
6878
6879 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
6880
6881 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
6882 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
6883 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
6884 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
6885 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
6886 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
6887 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
6888 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
6889 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
6890 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
6891 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
6892
6893 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6894 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6895 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6896 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6897 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6898 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
6899 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
6900 project files currently available from
6901 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6902
6903 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6904 the updated
6905 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6906 and
6907 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6908 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6909 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6910 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6911
6912       </div>
6913       <div class="tags">
6914
6915
6916         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>.
6917
6918
6919       </div>
6920     </div>
6921     <div class="padding"></div>
6922
6923     <div class="entry">
6924       <div class="title">
6925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6926       </div>
6927       <div class="date">
6928         27th July 2013
6929       </div>
6930       <div class="body">
6931         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6932 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6933
6934 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
6935 2013-07-27</strong></p>
6936
6937 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6938 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6939
6940 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6941
6942 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6943 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6944 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6945 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6946 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6947 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6948 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6949 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6950 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6951 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6952 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6953 desktop contains
6954 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6955 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6956 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6957 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6958
6959 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6960 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6961 Squeeze release.</p>
6962
6963 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6964 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6965 release.</p>
6966
6967 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6968
6969 <ul>
6970
6971 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
6972    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
6973 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
6974    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
6975    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
6976    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
6977    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
6978 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
6979 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
6980 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
6981    crash bugs.</li>
6982
6983 </ul>
6984
6985 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6986
6987 <ul>
6988
6989 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
6990    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
6991 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
6992    netinst CD.</li>
6993 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
6994    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
6995 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
6996    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
6997    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
6998 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
6999    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7000    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7001 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7002    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7003    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7004 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7005    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7006 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7007
7008 </ul>
7009
7010 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7011
7012 <ul>
7013
7014 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7015 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7016     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7017 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7018
7019 </ul>
7020
7021 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7022
7023 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7024
7025 <ul>
7026
7027 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7028
7029 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7030
7031 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7032
7033 </ul>
7034
7035 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7036 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7037
7038 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7039
7040 <ul>
7041
7042 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7043 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7044 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7045
7046 </ul>
7047
7048 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7049 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7050
7051
7052 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7053
7054 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7055
7056       </div>
7057       <div class="tags">
7058
7059
7060         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>.
7061
7062
7063       </div>
7064     </div>
7065     <div class="padding"></div>
7066
7067     <div class="entry">
7068       <div class="title">
7069         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7070       </div>
7071       <div class="date">
7072         17th July 2013
7073       </div>
7074       <div class="body">
7075         <p>Today I switched to
7076 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7077 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7078 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7080 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7081 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7082 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7083 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7084 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7085 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7086 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7087 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7088 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7089 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7090 station from now on.</p>
7091
7092 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7093 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7094 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7095 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7096 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7097 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7098 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7099 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7100 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7101 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7102 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7103 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7104
7105 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7106 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7107 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7108 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7109 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7110 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7111 parameters are tuned:</p>
7112
7113 <ul>
7114
7115 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7116     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7117
7118 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7119     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7120     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7121
7122 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7123     systems.</li>
7124
7125 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7126     /etc/fstab.</li>
7127
7128 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7129
7130 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7131     cron.daily).</li>
7132
7133 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7134     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7135
7136 </ul>
7137
7138 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7139 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7140 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7141 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7142 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7143 from getting the data on the disk (see
7144 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7145 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7146 right thing to do.</p>
7147
7148 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7149 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7150 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7151
7152 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7153 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7154 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7155 instead of during my work.</p>
7156
7157 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7158 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7159
7160 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7161 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7162 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7163
7164 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7165 there.</p>
7166
7167 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7168 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7169 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7170 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7171 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7172 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7173 back.</p>
7174
7175       </div>
7176       <div class="tags">
7177
7178
7179         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>.
7180
7181
7182       </div>
7183     </div>
7184     <div class="padding"></div>
7185
7186     <div class="entry">
7187       <div class="title">
7188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7189       </div>
7190       <div class="date">
7191         10th July 2013
7192       </div>
7193       <div class="body">
7194         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7195 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7196 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7197 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7198 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7199 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7200 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7201 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7202
7203 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7204 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7205 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7206 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7207 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7208 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7209 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7210 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7211 lock up when I download a new
7212 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7213 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7214 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7215
7216 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7217 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7218 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7219 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7220 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7221 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7222
7223 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7224 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7225 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7226 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7227 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7228 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7229
7230 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7231 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7232 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7233 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7234 exist).</p>
7235
7236       </div>
7237       <div class="tags">
7238
7239
7240         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>.
7241
7242
7243       </div>
7244     </div>
7245     <div class="padding"></div>
7246
7247     <div class="entry">
7248       <div class="title">
7249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
7250       </div>
7251       <div class="date">
7252          9th July 2013
7253       </div>
7254       <div class="body">
7255         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7256 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7257 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7258 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7259 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7260 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7261 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7262
7263 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7264 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7265 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7266 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7267 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7268
7269       </div>
7270       <div class="tags">
7271
7272
7273         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>.
7274
7275
7276       </div>
7277     </div>
7278     <div class="padding"></div>
7279
7280     <div class="entry">
7281       <div class="title">
7282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
7283       </div>
7284       <div class="date">
7285          5th July 2013
7286       </div>
7287       <div class="body">
7288         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7289 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7290 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7291 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7292 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7293 ended up picking a
7294 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7295 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7296 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7297 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7298 on that below.</p>
7299
7300 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7301 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7302 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7303 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7304 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7305 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7306 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7307 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7308 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7309
7310 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7311 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7312 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7313 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7314 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7315 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7316 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7317
7318 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7319 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7320
7321 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7322 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7323 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7324 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7325 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7326 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7327 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7328 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7329 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7330 kernel developers as
7331 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7332 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7333 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7334 Lenovo forums, both for
7335 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7336 2012-11-10</a> and for
7337 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
7338 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7339 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7340 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7341 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7342 There is even a
7343 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7344 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7345 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7346
7347 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7348 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7349 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7350 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7351 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7352 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7353 fixed. :)</p>
7354
7355       </div>
7356       <div class="tags">
7357
7358
7359         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>.
7360
7361
7362       </div>
7363     </div>
7364     <div class="padding"></div>
7365
7366     <div class="entry">
7367       <div class="title">
7368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
7369       </div>
7370       <div class="date">
7371          4th July 2013
7372       </div>
7373       <div class="body">
7374         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7375 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7376 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7377 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7378 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7379 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7380 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7381 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7382 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7383
7384 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7385 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7386 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7387 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7388 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7389 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7390 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7391
7392 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7393 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7394 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7395 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7396 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7397 new laptop now. :)</p>
7398
7399 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7400
7401       </div>
7402       <div class="tags">
7403
7404
7405         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7406
7407
7408       </div>
7409     </div>
7410     <div class="padding"></div>
7411
7412     <div class="entry">
7413       <div class="title">
7414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7415       </div>
7416       <div class="date">
7417          3rd July 2013
7418       </div>
7419       <div class="body">
7420         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7421 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7422
7423 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
7424 2013-07-03</strong></p>
7425
7426 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7427 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7428
7429 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7430
7431 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7432 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7433 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7434 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7435 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7436 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7437 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7438 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7439 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7440 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7441 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7442 desktop contains
7443 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7444 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7445 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7446 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7447
7448 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7449 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7450 Squeeze release.</p>
7451
7452 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7453 <ul>
7454   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
7455   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
7456     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
7457     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
7458   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
7459     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
7460     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
7461   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
7462     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
7463     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
7464     too.</li>
7465   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
7466     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
7467 </ul>
7468 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7469 <ul>
7470   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
7471   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
7472   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
7473     up for some language options.</li>
7474   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
7475   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
7476   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
7477     d-i is doing it.</li>
7478   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
7479     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
7480   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
7481     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
7482     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
7483   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
7484     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
7485   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
7486   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
7487     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
7488   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
7489     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
7490 </ul>
7491 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7492 <ul>
7493   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7494     available yet (698840).</li>
7495   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
7496 </ul>
7497 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7498
7499 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7500 <ul>
7501   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7502   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7503   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
7504 </ul>
7505
7506 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
7507 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
7508
7509 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7510 <ul>
7511   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7512   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7513   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
7514 </ul>
7515
7516 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
7517 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
7518
7519 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7520
7521 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7522
7523       </div>
7524       <div class="tags">
7525
7526
7527         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>.
7528
7529
7530       </div>
7531     </div>
7532     <div class="padding"></div>
7533
7534     <div class="entry">
7535       <div class="title">
7536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
7537       </div>
7538       <div class="date">
7539         25th June 2013
7540       </div>
7541       <div class="body">
7542         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7543 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7544 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7545 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7546 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7547 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7548 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7549 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7550 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7551 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7552 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7553
7554 <p><pre>
7555 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7556 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7557 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7558 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7559 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7560 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7561 firmware-ipw2x00
7562 firmware-ipw2x00
7563 Preconfiguring packages ...
7564 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7565 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7566 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7567 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7568 #
7569 </pre></p>
7570
7571 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7572 printed instead:</p>
7573
7574 <p><pre>
7575 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7576 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7577 #
7578 </pre></p>
7579
7580 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7581 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7582
7583 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7584 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7585 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7586 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7587 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7588 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7589 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7590 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7591 machine.</p>
7592
7593 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7594 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7595 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7596 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7597 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7598 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7599
7600       </div>
7601       <div class="tags">
7602
7603
7604         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>.
7605
7606
7607       </div>
7608     </div>
7609     <div class="padding"></div>
7610
7611     <div class="entry">
7612       <div class="title">
7613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
7614       </div>
7615       <div class="date">
7616         22nd June 2013
7617       </div>
7618       <div class="body">
7619         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7620 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
7621 which check that services are running, working, and return the
7622 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
7623 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
7624 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
7625 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
7626 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
7627 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
7628
7629 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
7630 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
7631 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
7632 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
7633 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
7634 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
7635 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
7636 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
7637 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
7638 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
7639 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
7640 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
7641 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
7642 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
7643
7644 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
7645 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
7646 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
7647 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
7648 the problem.</p>
7649
7650 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
7651 please join us on
7652 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7653 irc.debian.org</a> and the
7654 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
7655 list.</p>
7656
7657       </div>
7658       <div class="tags">
7659
7660
7661         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>.
7662
7663
7664       </div>
7665     </div>
7666     <div class="padding"></div>
7667
7668     <div class="entry">
7669       <div class="title">
7670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
7671       </div>
7672       <div class="date">
7673         17th June 2013
7674       </div>
7675       <div class="body">
7676         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7677 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
7678 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
7679 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
7680 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
7681 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
7682 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
7683 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
7684
7685 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7686
7687 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
7688 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
7689 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
7690 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
7691 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
7692 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
7693 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
7694 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
7695 field.</p>
7696
7697 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
7698 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
7699 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
7700 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
7701 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
7702 the only one we have in our country.</p>
7703
7704 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7705 project?</strong></p>
7706
7707 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
7708 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
7709 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
7710 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
7711 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
7712 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
7713 ways to contribute.</p>
7714
7715 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
7716 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
7717 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
7718 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
7719 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
7720 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
7721 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
7722 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
7723 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
7724 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
7725
7726 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7727 Edu?</strong></p>
7728
7729 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
7730 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
7731 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
7732 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
7733 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
7734 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
7735 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
7736 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
7737
7738 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
7739 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
7740 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
7741 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
7742 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
7743 project.</p>
7744
7745 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7746 Edu?</strong></p>
7747
7748 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
7749 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
7750 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
7751 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
7752 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
7753 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
7754 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
7755 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
7756 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
7757
7758 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
7759 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
7760 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
7761 on.</p>
7762
7763 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7764
7765 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
7766 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
7767 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
7768 Enlightenment project a lot!),
7769 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
7770 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
7771 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
7772 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
7773 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
7774
7775 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7776 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7777
7778 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
7779 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
7780 that:</p>
7781
7782 <ul>
7783
7784 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
7785
7786 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
7787     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
7788     of teenagers more?</li>
7789
7790 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
7791     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
7792     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
7793     them!)</li>
7794
7795 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
7796     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
7797     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
7798
7799 </ul>
7800
7801 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
7802 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
7803 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
7804 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
7805 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
7806
7807       </div>
7808       <div class="tags">
7809
7810
7811         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>.
7812
7813
7814       </div>
7815     </div>
7816     <div class="padding"></div>
7817
7818     <div class="entry">
7819       <div class="title">
7820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
7821       </div>
7822       <div class="date">
7823         12th June 2013
7824       </div>
7825       <div class="body">
7826         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
7827 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7828 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
7829 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
7830 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
7831 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
7832
7833 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7834
7835 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
7836 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
7837 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
7838
7839 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
7840 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
7841 each other.</p>
7842
7843 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7844 project?</strong></p>
7845
7846 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
7847 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
7848 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
7849 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
7850 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
7851 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
7852 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
7853 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
7854 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
7855 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
7856 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
7857 we'll get there one day.</p>
7858
7859 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7860 Edu?</strong></p>
7861
7862 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
7863 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
7864 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
7865 very high quality work.</p>
7866
7867 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
7868 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
7869 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
7870 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
7871 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
7872
7873 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7874 Edu?</strong></p>
7875
7876 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
7877 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
7878 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
7879
7880 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
7881 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
7882 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
7883 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
7884 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
7885 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
7886 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
7887 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
7888 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
7889 currently.</p>
7890
7891 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
7892 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
7893 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
7894 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
7895 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
7896 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
7897 autonomous.</p>
7898
7899 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7900
7901 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
7902 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
7903 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
7904 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
7905 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
7906
7907 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
7908 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
7909 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
7910 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
7911 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
7912 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
7913 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
7914 X.</p>
7915
7916 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
7917 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
7918 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
7919 it :p)
7920
7921 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7922 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7923
7924 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
7925 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
7926 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
7927 that.</p>
7928
7929 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
7930 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
7931 advantage of that.</p>
7932
7933 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
7934 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
7935 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
7936 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
7937 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
7938 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
7939 best solution for them.</p>
7940
7941 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
7942 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
7943 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
7944
7945       </div>
7946       <div class="tags">
7947
7948
7949         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>.
7950
7951
7952       </div>
7953     </div>
7954     <div class="padding"></div>
7955
7956     <div class="entry">
7957       <div class="title">
7958         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
7959       </div>
7960       <div class="date">
7961         11th June 2013
7962       </div>
7963       <div class="body">
7964         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7965 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7966 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7967 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7968 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7969 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7970 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7971 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7972 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7973 i915 driver used by the
7974 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7975 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7976
7977 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7978 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7979 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7980 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7981 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7982
7983 <pre>
7984 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7985 update-initramfs -u -k all
7986 </pre>
7987
7988 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7989 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7990 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7991 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7992 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7993 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7994 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7995 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7996 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7997 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7998 number.</p>
7999
8000 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8001 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8002
8003 <p><pre>
8004 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8005     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8006     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8007  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8008  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8009     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8010  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8011     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8012  Latency: 0
8013  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8014  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8015  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8016  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8017  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8018  Capabilities: <access denied>
8019  Kernel driver in use: i915
8020 </pre></p>
8021
8022 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8023
8024 <p><pre>
8025 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8026        ...
8027         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8028         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8029        ...
8030 }
8031 </pre></p>
8032
8033 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8034 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8035 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8036 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8037 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8038 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8039 yet shown up in
8040 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8041 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8042 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8043 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8045 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8046
8047 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8048 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8049 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8050 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8051 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8052 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8053 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8054 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8055 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8056 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8057 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8058 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8059
8060 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8061 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8062 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8063 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8064 backlight.</p>
8065
8066       </div>
8067       <div class="tags">
8068
8069
8070         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>.
8071
8072
8073       </div>
8074     </div>
8075     <div class="padding"></div>
8076
8077     <div class="entry">
8078       <div class="title">
8079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8080       </div>
8081       <div class="date">
8082         10th June 2013
8083       </div>
8084       <div class="body">
8085         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8086 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8087
8088 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8089 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8090
8091 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8092 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8093
8094 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8095
8096 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8097 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8098 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8099 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8100 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8101 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8102 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8103 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8104 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8105 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8106 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8107 desktop contains
8108 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8109 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8110 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8111 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8112
8113 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8114 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8115 Squeeze release.</p>
8116
8117 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8118
8119 <ul>
8120
8121 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8122 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
8123 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8124 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8125 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8126
8127 </ul>
8128
8129 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8130
8131 <ul>
8132
8133 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
8134 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8135 <li>New Romanian translation.
8136 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8137 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
8138 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8139 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8140 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8141 <li>More testsuite tests.
8142 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8143 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8144
8145 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8146 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8147
8148 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8149 them up with GOsa².</li>
8150
8151 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8152
8153 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8154 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8155 entered password). </li>
8156
8157 </ul>
8158
8159 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8160
8161 <ul>
8162
8163 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8164
8165 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8166 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8167 missing import feature).</li>
8168
8169 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8170
8171 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8172 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8173 unfixed.</li>
8174
8175 </ul>
8176
8177 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8178
8179 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8180
8181 <ul>
8182
8183 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8184
8185 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8186
8187 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8188
8189 </ul>
8190
8191 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8192 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8193
8194 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8195
8196 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8197
8198       </div>
8199       <div class="tags">
8200
8201
8202         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>.
8203
8204
8205       </div>
8206     </div>
8207     <div class="padding"></div>
8208
8209     <div class="entry">
8210       <div class="title">
8211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
8212       </div>
8213       <div class="date">
8214          5th June 2013
8215       </div>
8216       <div class="body">
8217         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8218 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8219 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8220 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8221 the project:
8222
8223 <ol>
8224
8225 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8226   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8227   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8228   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8229   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8230
8231 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8232   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8233   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8234   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8235   #698840</a>.</li>
8236
8237 </ol>
8238
8239 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
8240 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8241 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
8242
8243       </div>
8244       <div class="tags">
8245
8246
8247         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>.
8248
8249
8250       </div>
8251     </div>
8252     <div class="padding"></div>
8253
8254     <div class="entry">
8255       <div class="title">
8256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
8257       </div>
8258       <div class="date">
8259          4th June 2013
8260       </div>
8261       <div class="body">
8262         <p>It has been a while since my last English
8263 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8264 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
8265 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
8266 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
8267 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
8268
8269 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8270
8271 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
8272 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
8273 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
8274 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
8275
8276 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
8277 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
8278 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
8279
8280 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8281 project?</strong></p>
8282
8283 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
8284 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
8285 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
8286 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
8287 manual.
8288
8289 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
8290 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
8291 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
8292 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
8293
8294 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
8295 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
8296 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
8297 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
8298 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
8299 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
8300 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
8301 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
8302 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
8303 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
8304
8305 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
8306 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
8307 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
8308 beautiful project.</p>
8309
8310 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8311 Edu?</strong></p>
8312
8313 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
8314 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
8315 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
8316
8317 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
8318 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
8319 of educational free software.</p>
8320
8321 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8322 Edu?</strong></p>
8323
8324 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
8325 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
8326 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
8327 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
8328 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
8329
8330 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
8331 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
8332 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
8333 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
8334 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
8335 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
8336 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
8337 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
8338
8339 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8340
8341 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
8342 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
8343 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
8344 also using the mathematical software
8345 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
8346 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
8347 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
8348
8349 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
8350 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
8351 statistics?</strong></p>
8352
8353 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
8354 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
8355 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
8356 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
8357
8358 <ul>
8359
8360 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
8361 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
8362 constructions in planar geometry
8363
8364 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
8365 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
8366 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
8367
8368 </ul>
8369
8370 <p>I like also
8371 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
8372 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
8373 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
8374
8375 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8376 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8377
8378 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
8379
8380 <ul>
8381
8382 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
8383
8384 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
8385     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
8386     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
8387
8388 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
8389
8390 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
8391     system.</li>
8392
8393 </ul>
8394
8395       </div>
8396       <div class="tags">
8397
8398
8399         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>.
8400
8401
8402       </div>
8403     </div>
8404     <div class="padding"></div>
8405
8406     <div class="entry">
8407       <div class="title">
8408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
8409       </div>
8410       <div class="date">
8411          1st June 2013
8412       </div>
8413       <div class="body">
8414         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8415 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
8416 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
8417 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
8418 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
8419 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
8420 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
8421 program.</p>
8422
8423 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
8424
8425 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
8426 <p>
8427 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
8428 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8429 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
8430 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
8431 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8432 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
8433 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
8434 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
8435 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
8436 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
8437 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
8438 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
8439 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
8440 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
8441 </p>
8442
8443 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
8444 <p>
8445 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
8446 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
8447 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
8448 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
8449 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
8450 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8451 </p>
8452
8453 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
8454 <p>
8455 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8456 </p>
8457
8458 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
8459 <p>
8460 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
8461 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
8462 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
8463 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
8464 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
8465 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
8466 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
8467 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
8468 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8469 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
8470 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
8471 </p>
8472
8473 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
8474 <p>
8475 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8476 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
8477 </p>
8478
8479 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
8480 <p>
8481 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
8482 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
8483 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8484 </p>
8485
8486 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
8487 <p>
8488 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8489 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
8490 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
8491 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
8492 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
8493 </p>
8494
8495 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
8496 <p>
8497 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8498 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
8499 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8500 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
8501 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
8502 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
8503 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
8504 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
8505 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
8506 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
8507 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
8508 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
8509 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
8510 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
8511 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8512 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
8513 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
8514 </p>
8515
8516 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
8517 <p>
8518 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8519 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
8520 </p>
8521
8522 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
8523 <p>
8524 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
8525 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
8526 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8527 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8528 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
8529 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
8530 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
8531 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
8532 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
8533 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8534 </p>
8535
8536 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
8537 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
8538 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
8539 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
8540 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
8541 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
8542 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
8543
8544       </div>
8545       <div class="tags">
8546
8547
8548         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>.
8549
8550
8551       </div>
8552     </div>
8553     <div class="padding"></div>
8554
8555     <div class="entry">
8556       <div class="title">
8557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
8558       </div>
8559       <div class="date">
8560         27th May 2013
8561       </div>
8562       <div class="body">
8563         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8564 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
8565 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8566 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8567 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8568 and Windows 8.</p>
8569
8570 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8571 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8572 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8573 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8574 enough to tell.</p>
8575
8576 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8577 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8578 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8579 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8580 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8581 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8582 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8583 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8584 to follow.</p>
8585
8586 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8587 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8588 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8589 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8590 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8591 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8592 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8593 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8594
8595 <p>I've updated the
8596 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8597 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8598 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8599 machine.</p>
8600
8601 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8602 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8603
8604       </div>
8605       <div class="tags">
8606
8607
8608         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>.
8609
8610
8611       </div>
8612     </div>
8613     <div class="padding"></div>
8614
8615     <div class="entry">
8616       <div class="title">
8617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8618       </div>
8619       <div class="date">
8620         25th May 2013
8621       </div>
8622       <div class="body">
8623         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8624 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8625 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8626 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8627 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8628 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8629
8630 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8631 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8632 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8633 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8634 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8635 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8636 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8637 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8638 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8639 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8640
8641 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8642 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8643 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8644 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8645 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8646 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8647
8648 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8649 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8650 on new Laptops?</p>
8651
8652       </div>
8653       <div class="tags">
8654
8655
8656         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>.
8657
8658
8659       </div>
8660     </div>
8661     <div class="padding"></div>
8662
8663     <div class="entry">
8664       <div class="title">
8665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8666       </div>
8667       <div class="date">
8668         17th May 2013
8669       </div>
8670       <div class="body">
8671         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8672 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8673 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8674 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8675 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8676 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8677 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8678 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8679 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8680 donate some money</a>.
8681
8682 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8683 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8684 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8685 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8686 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8687
8688 <p>The script,
8689 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
8690 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8691 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8692 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8693
8694 <ol>
8695
8696 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8697 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8698 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8699     our configuration.</li>
8700 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8701     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8702     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8703     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8704 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8705     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8706 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8707
8708 </ol>
8709
8710 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8711 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8712 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8713 the needed packages.</p>
8714
8715 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8716 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8717 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8718 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8719 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8720 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8721
8722 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8723 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8724 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8725
8726 <p><pre>
8727 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8728 DESKTOP="lxde"
8729 </pre></p>
8730
8731 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8732 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8733 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8734 boot.</p>
8735
8736       </div>
8737       <div class="tags">
8738
8739
8740         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>.
8741
8742
8743       </div>
8744     </div>
8745     <div class="padding"></div>
8746
8747     <div class="entry">
8748       <div class="title">
8749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8750       </div>
8751       <div class="date">
8752         14th May 2013
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="body">
8755         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8756 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
8757 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8758
8759 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
8760 2013-05-14</strong></p>
8761
8762 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8763 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
8764 codename "Wheezy".</p>
8765
8766 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8767
8768 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
8769 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
8770 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
8771 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
8772 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
8773 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
8774 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
8775 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
8776
8777 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8778 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8779 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8780
8781 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8782 <ul>
8783   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
8784     default.</li>
8785   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
8786   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
8787   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
8788     ibus-anthy.</li>
8789 </ul>
8790
8791 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8792 <ul>
8793
8794   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
8795     reliability improvements.</li>
8796   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
8797     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
8798   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
8799     problems.</li>
8800   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
8801     direct:// URL.</li>
8802   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
8803   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
8804   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
8805   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
8806     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
8807   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
8808     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
8809 </ul>
8810
8811 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8812 <ul>
8813
8814   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
8815     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
8816     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
8817   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
8818   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8819     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
8820   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
8821   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
8822   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
8823     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
8824   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
8825     password submission problem
8826     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
8827
8828 </ul>
8829
8830 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8831
8832 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8833 <ul>
8834
8835   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
8836   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
8837   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
8838
8839 </ul>
8840
8841 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
8842
8843 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
8844
8845 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8846
8847 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8848
8849       </div>
8850       <div class="tags">
8851
8852
8853         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>.
8854
8855
8856       </div>
8857     </div>
8858     <div class="padding"></div>
8859
8860     <div class="entry">
8861       <div class="title">
8862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
8863       </div>
8864       <div class="date">
8865         11th May 2013
8866       </div>
8867       <div class="body">
8868         <P>In January,
8869 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
8870 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
8871 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
8872 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
8873 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
8874 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
8875 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
8876 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
8877 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
8878 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
8879 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
8880 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
8881
8882 <p><table>
8883 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
8884 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
8885 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
8886 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
8887 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
8888 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
8889 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
8890 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
8891 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
8892 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
8893 </table></p>
8894
8895 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
8896 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
8897 available in experimental.</p>
8898
8899 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
8900 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
8901 for LEGO designers.</p>
8902
8903       </div>
8904       <div class="tags">
8905
8906
8907         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>.
8908
8909
8910       </div>
8911     </div>
8912     <div class="padding"></div>
8913
8914     <div class="entry">
8915       <div class="title">
8916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
8917       </div>
8918       <div class="date">
8919          5th May 2013
8920       </div>
8921       <div class="body">
8922         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
8923 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
8924 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
8925 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
8926 soon.</p>
8927
8928 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
8929 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
8930 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
8931 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
8932 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
8933 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
8934 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
8935 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
8936 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
8937 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
8938 Edu.</a>
8939
8940 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
8941 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
8942 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
8943 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
8944 follow.<p>
8945
8946       </div>
8947       <div class="tags">
8948
8949
8950         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>.
8951
8952
8953       </div>
8954     </div>
8955     <div class="padding"></div>
8956
8957     <div class="entry">
8958       <div class="title">
8959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8960       </div>
8961       <div class="date">
8962         26th April 2013
8963       </div>
8964       <div class="body">
8965         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
8966 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
8967 announcement:</p>
8968
8969 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
8970 2013-04-26</strong></p>
8971
8972 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
8973 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8974
8975 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8976
8977 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8978 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8979 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8980 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
8981 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8982 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8983 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8984 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8985 installed via the network.</p>
8986
8987 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8988 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8989 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8990
8991 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8992
8993 <ul>
8994 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
8995   <ul>
8996      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
8997      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
8998          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
8999          manual.)</li>
9000      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9001      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9002      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9003      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9004      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9005      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9006      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9007      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9008      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9009      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9010      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9011      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9012          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9013          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9014      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9015          installation.</li>
9016      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9017          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
9018   </ul></li>
9019 </ul>
9020
9021 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9022 <ul>
9023 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9024     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9025     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9026 </ul>
9027
9028 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9029 <ul>
9030 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9031     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9032     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9033 </ul>
9034
9035 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9036 <ul>
9037 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9038     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9039     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9040 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9041     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9042     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9043 </ul>
9044
9045 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9046 <ul>
9047 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9048     yet.</li>
9049 </ul>
9050
9051 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9052
9053 <ul>
9054 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9055     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9056     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9057 </ul>
9058
9059 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9060
9061 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9062 <ul>
9063 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9064 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9065 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9066 </ul>
9067
9068 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9069
9070 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9071
9072 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9073
9074 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9075
9076       </div>
9077       <div class="tags">
9078
9079
9080         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>.
9081
9082
9083       </div>
9084     </div>
9085     <div class="padding"></div>
9086
9087     <div class="entry">
9088       <div class="title">
9089         <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>
9090       </div>
9091       <div class="date">
9092         16th April 2013
9093       </div>
9094       <div class="body">
9095         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9096 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9097 Details about the gathering can be found
9098 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9099 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9100 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9101 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9102 weekend.</p>
9103
9104 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9105 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9106 Edu release.</p>
9107
9108 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9109
9110       </div>
9111       <div class="tags">
9112
9113
9114         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>.
9115
9116
9117       </div>
9118     </div>
9119     <div class="padding"></div>
9120
9121     <div class="entry">
9122       <div class="title">
9123         <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>
9124       </div>
9125       <div class="date">
9126          3rd April 2013
9127       </div>
9128       <div class="body">
9129         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9130 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9131 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9132 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9133
9134 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9135 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9136 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9137 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9138 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9139 BTS. :)</p>
9140
9141       </div>
9142       <div class="tags">
9143
9144
9145         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>.
9146
9147
9148       </div>
9149     </div>
9150     <div class="padding"></div>
9151
9152     <div class="entry">
9153       <div class="title">
9154         <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>
9155       </div>
9156       <div class="date">
9157         26th March 2013
9158       </div>
9159       <div class="body">
9160         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9161 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9162 font you use when printing.</p>
9163
9164 <p>Three years ago,
9165 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9166 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9167 changed their default front from
9168 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9169 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9170 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9171 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9172 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9173 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9174 prints.</p>
9175
9176 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9177 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9178 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9179 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9180 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9181 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9182 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9183 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9184 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9185 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9186 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9187
9188 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9189 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9190 and save some money in the process.</p>
9191
9192 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9193 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9194 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9195 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9196 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9197 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9198 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9199 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9200 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9201
9202       </div>
9203       <div class="tags">
9204
9205
9206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9207
9208
9209       </div>
9210     </div>
9211     <div class="padding"></div>
9212
9213     <div class="entry">
9214       <div class="title">
9215         <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>
9216       </div>
9217       <div class="date">
9218         24th March 2013
9219       </div>
9220       <div class="body">
9221         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9222 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9223 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9224 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9225 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9226 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9227 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9228 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9229 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9230 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9231 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9232 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9233
9234 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9235 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
9236 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
9237 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
9238 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
9239 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
9240 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
9241 all I had to do was to use the
9242 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
9243 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
9244 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
9245 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
9246 xsltproc/fop (aka
9247 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
9248 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
9249 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
9250 technical detail.</p>
9251
9252 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
9253 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
9254 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
9255 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
9256 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
9257 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
9258
9259 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
9260 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
9261 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
9262 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
9263 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
9264 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
9265 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
9266 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
9267 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
9268
9269 <p><blockquote><pre>
9270 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9271 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9272   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9273     &lt;hr/&gt;
9274   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9275 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9276 </pre></blockquote></p>
9277
9278 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9279
9280 <p><blockquote><pre>
9281 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9282 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9283   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9284     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
9285       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
9286     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
9287   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9288 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9289 </pre></blockquote></p>
9290
9291 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
9292 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
9293 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
9294 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
9295 enough.</p>
9296
9297 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
9298 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
9299 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
9300 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
9301 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
9302 look like this:</p>
9303
9304 <p><blockquote><pre>
9305 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9306 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9307   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9308     &lt;br/&gt;
9309   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9310 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9311 </pre></blockquote></p>
9312
9313 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9314
9315 <p><blockquote><pre>
9316 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9317 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
9318   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
9319   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9320     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
9321   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9322 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9323 </pre></blockquote></p>
9324
9325 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
9326 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
9327 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
9328 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
9329 page.</p>
9330
9331 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
9332 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
9333 github</a>
9334 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
9335 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
9336 days.</p>
9337
9338       </div>
9339       <div class="tags">
9340
9341
9342         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>.
9343
9344
9345       </div>
9346     </div>
9347     <div class="padding"></div>
9348
9349     <div class="entry">
9350       <div class="title">
9351         <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>
9352       </div>
9353       <div class="date">
9354         17th March 2013
9355       </div>
9356       <div class="body">
9357         <p>Via
9358 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
9359 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
9360 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
9361 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9362 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
9363 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
9364 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
9365
9366 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
9367 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
9368
9369 <blockquote>
9370 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
9371 </blockquote>
9372
9373 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
9374
9375 <blockquote>
9376 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
9377 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
9378 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
9379 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
9380 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
9381 </blockquote>
9382
9383 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
9384 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
9385 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
9386 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
9387
9388 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
9389 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
9390
9391 <blockquote>
9392 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
9393 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
9394 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
9395 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
9396 </blockquote>
9397
9398 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
9399 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
9400 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
9401 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
9402 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
9403
9404 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
9405 embedding:</p>
9406
9407 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9408
9409       </div>
9410       <div class="tags">
9411
9412
9413         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>.
9414
9415
9416       </div>
9417     </div>
9418     <div class="padding"></div>
9419
9420     <div class="entry">
9421       <div class="title">
9422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
9423       </div>
9424       <div class="date">
9425          8th March 2013
9426       </div>
9427       <div class="body">
9428         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
9429 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9430 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
9431 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9432 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
9433 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
9434 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
9435
9436 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
9437
9438 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
9439 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
9440
9441 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
9442 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
9443 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
9444 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
9445 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
9446 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
9447
9448 <p>Images are available for download at
9449 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
9450
9451 <p>md5sums:
9452 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9453 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9454 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9455
9456 <p>sha1sums:
9457 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9458 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9459 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9460
9461 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
9462
9463 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
9464 2013-03-03:</p>
9465
9466 <ul>
9467   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
9468   <ul>
9469         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
9470         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
9471   </ul></li>
9472   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
9473   <ul>
9474         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
9475         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
9476   </ul></li>
9477   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
9478      <ul>
9479         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
9480         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
9481         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
9482                 Closes: #664596</li>
9483         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
9484                 Closes: #664976</li>
9485         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
9486            <ul>
9487                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
9488                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
9489            </ul></li>
9490         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
9491            <ul>
9492                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
9493                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
9494                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
9495                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
9496                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
9497            </ul></li>
9498         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
9499     </ul>
9500   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
9501     <ul>
9502         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
9503     </ul></li>
9504 </ul>
9505
9506 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
9507 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
9508 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
9509 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
9510
9511 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
9512 mailinglist
9513 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
9514 </p></blockquote>
9515
9516 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
9517
9518       </div>
9519       <div class="tags">
9520
9521
9522         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>.
9523
9524
9525       </div>
9526     </div>
9527     <div class="padding"></div>
9528
9529     <div class="entry">
9530       <div class="title">
9531         <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>
9532       </div>
9533       <div class="date">
9534          3rd March 2013
9535       </div>
9536       <div class="body">
9537         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
9538 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
9539 support using
9540 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9541 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
9542 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
9543 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
9544 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
9545 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
9546 using the GNU LGPL, and
9547 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
9548
9549 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
9550 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
9551 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
9552 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
9553 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
9554 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
9555
9556 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
9557 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
9558 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
9559 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
9560 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
9561 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
9562 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
9563 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
9564 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
9565 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
9566 signal distribution is handled using
9567 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
9568 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
9569 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
9570 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
9571 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
9572 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
9573 them up a bit more first.</p>
9574
9575 <p>The development is coordinated on the
9576 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
9577 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
9578 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
9579 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
9580 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
9581 development.</p>
9582
9583       </div>
9584       <div class="tags">
9585
9586
9587         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>.
9588
9589
9590       </div>
9591     </div>
9592     <div class="padding"></div>
9593
9594     <div class="entry">
9595       <div class="title">
9596         <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>
9597       </div>
9598       <div class="date">
9599         27th February 2013
9600       </div>
9601       <div class="body">
9602         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
9603 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
9604 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
9605 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
9606 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
9607 (where I am the chair of the board) and
9608 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
9609 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
9610 GNU», with this description:
9611
9612 <p><blockquote>
9613 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
9614 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
9615 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
9616 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
9617 </blockquote></p>
9618
9619 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
9620 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
9621 am really curious how many will show up.  See
9622 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
9623 page</a> for the location details.</p>
9624
9625       </div>
9626       <div class="tags">
9627
9628
9629         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>.
9630
9631
9632       </div>
9633     </div>
9634     <div class="padding"></div>
9635
9636     <div class="entry">
9637       <div class="title">
9638         <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>
9639       </div>
9640       <div class="date">
9641         15th February 2013
9642       </div>
9643       <div class="body">
9644         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
9645 now a great source of free maps available from
9646 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
9647 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
9648 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
9649 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
9650 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
9651 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
9652 page for descriptions).</p>
9653
9654 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
9655 map you can just edit the
9656 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
9657 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
9658
9659       </div>
9660       <div class="tags">
9661
9662
9663         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>.
9664
9665
9666       </div>
9667     </div>
9668     <div class="padding"></div>
9669
9670     <div class="entry">
9671       <div class="title">
9672         <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>
9673       </div>
9674       <div class="date">
9675         12th February 2013
9676       </div>
9677       <div class="body">
9678         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
9679 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
9680 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
9681 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
9682 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
9683 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
9684 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
9685 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
9686 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
9687 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
9688 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
9689 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
9690 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
9691 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
9692 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
9693 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
9694
9695 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
9696 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
9697 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
9698 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
9699 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
9700 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
9701 fields:</p>
9702
9703 <p><pre>
9704 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9705 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9706 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
9707 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9708 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9709 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9710 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9711 </pre></p>
9712
9713 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
9714 answer regarding
9715 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
9716 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
9717 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
9718 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
9719
9720 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
9721
9722 <p><pre>
9723 BEGIN:VCARD
9724 VERSION:2.1
9725 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
9726 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
9727 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
9728 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
9729 REV:20130212T095000Z
9730 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9731 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9732 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9733 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9734 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9735 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9736 END:VCARD
9737 </pre></p>
9738
9739 <p>The resulting QR code created using
9740 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
9741 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
9742 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
9743 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
9744 system.</p>
9745
9746 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
9747
9748 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
9749 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
9750 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
9751 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
9752
9753 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
9754 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
9755
9756       </div>
9757       <div class="tags">
9758
9759
9760         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>.
9761
9762
9763       </div>
9764     </div>
9765     <div class="padding"></div>
9766
9767     <div class="entry">
9768       <div class="title">
9769         <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>
9770       </div>
9771       <div class="date">
9772         10th February 2013
9773       </div>
9774       <div class="body">
9775         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
9776
9777 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
9778 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
9779 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
9780 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
9781 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
9782 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
9783 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
9784 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
9785 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
9786 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
9787 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
9788
9789 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
9790 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
9791 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
9792 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
9793 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
9794 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
9795 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
9796 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
9797 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
9798 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
9799 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
9800 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
9801 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
9802 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
9803 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
9804 ones own
9805 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
9806 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
9807 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
9808 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
9809 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
9810 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
9811 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
9812 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
9813 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
9814 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
9815 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
9816
9817 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
9818 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
9819 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
9820 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
9821 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
9822 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
9823
9824 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
9825 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
9826 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
9827
9828       </div>
9829       <div class="tags">
9830
9831
9832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9833
9834
9835       </div>
9836     </div>
9837     <div class="padding"></div>
9838
9839     <div class="entry">
9840       <div class="title">
9841         <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>
9842       </div>
9843       <div class="date">
9844          2nd February 2013
9845       </div>
9846       <div class="body">
9847         <p>My
9848 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
9849 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
9850 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
9851 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
9852 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
9853 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
9854 version too.</p>
9855
9856 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
9857 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
9858 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
9859 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
9860 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
9861 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
9862 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
9863 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
9864
9865 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
9866 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
9867 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
9868 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
9869 it. :)</p>
9870
9871 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9872 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9873 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9874
9875       </div>
9876       <div class="tags">
9877
9878
9879         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>.
9880
9881
9882       </div>
9883     </div>
9884     <div class="padding"></div>
9885
9886     <div class="entry">
9887       <div class="title">
9888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
9889       </div>
9890       <div class="date">
9891         22nd January 2013
9892       </div>
9893       <div class="body">
9894         <p>Yesterday, I
9895 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
9896 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
9897 pluggable hardware devices, which I
9898 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
9899 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
9900 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
9901 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
9902 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
9903 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
9904 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
9905 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
9906 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
9907 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
9908
9909 <pre>
9910 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
9911 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
9912 </pre>
9913
9914 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
9915 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
9916 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
9917 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
9918
9919 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
9920 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
9921 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
9922 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
9923 word.</p>
9924
9925 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
9926 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
9927 process.</p>
9928
9929 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
9930 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
9931
9932       </div>
9933       <div class="tags">
9934
9935
9936         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>.
9937
9938
9939       </div>
9940     </div>
9941     <div class="padding"></div>
9942
9943     <div class="entry">
9944       <div class="title">
9945         <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>
9946       </div>
9947       <div class="date">
9948         21st January 2013
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="body">
9951         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
9952 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
9953 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
9954 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
9955 it, fetch the
9956 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
9957 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
9958 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
9959 autostart script.</p>
9960
9961 <p>The design is simple:</p>
9962
9963 <ul>
9964
9965 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
9966 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
9967
9968 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
9969 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
9970 initially did.</li>
9971
9972 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
9973 the APT database, a database
9974 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
9975 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
9976
9977 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
9978 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
9979 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
9980 package or packages.</li>
9981
9982 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
9983 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
9984
9985 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
9986 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
9987
9988 </ul>
9989
9990 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
9991 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
9992 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
9993 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
9994
9995 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
9996 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
9997 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
9998 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
9999 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10000
10001 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10002 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10003 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10004 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10005 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10006 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10007 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10008 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10009
10010 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10011 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10012 '<tt>svn checkout
10013 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10014 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10015 devscripts package.</p>
10016
10017 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10018 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10019 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10020 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10021 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10022
10023       </div>
10024       <div class="tags">
10025
10026
10027         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>.
10028
10029
10030       </div>
10031     </div>
10032     <div class="padding"></div>
10033
10034     <div class="entry">
10035       <div class="title">
10036         <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>
10037       </div>
10038       <div class="date">
10039         19th January 2013
10040       </div>
10041       <div class="body">
10042         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10043 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10044 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10045 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10046 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10047 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10048 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10049 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10050 not a durable solution.
10051
10052 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10053 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10054
10055 <ul>
10056
10057 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10058   than A4).</li>
10059 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10060 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10061 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10062 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10063 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10064 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10065 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10066 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10067 size).</li>
10068 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10069   X.org packages.</li>
10070 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10071   the time).
10072
10073 </ul>
10074
10075 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10076 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10077 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10078 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10079 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10080 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10081 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10082 still be useful.</p>
10083
10084 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10085 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10086 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10087 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10088 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10089 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10090
10091       </div>
10092       <div class="tags">
10093
10094
10095         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>.
10096
10097
10098       </div>
10099     </div>
10100     <div class="padding"></div>
10101
10102     <div class="entry">
10103       <div class="title">
10104         <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>
10105       </div>
10106       <div class="date">
10107         18th January 2013
10108       </div>
10109       <div class="body">
10110         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10111 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10112 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10113 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10114 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10115 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10116 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10117
10118 <pre>
10119 #!/usr/bin/python
10120 import sys
10121 import apt
10122 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10123     cache = apt.Cache()
10124     cache.open(None)
10125     thepkgs = []
10126     for pkg in cache:
10127         version = pkg.candidate
10128         if version is None:
10129             version = pkg.installed
10130         if version is None:
10131             continue
10132         record = version.record
10133         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10134             continue
10135         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10136         for t in mime_types:
10137             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10138             if t == mimetype:
10139                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10140     return thepkgs
10141 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10142 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10143     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10144 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10145 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10146     print "  %s" %pkg
10147 </pre>
10148
10149 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10150
10151 <pre>
10152 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10153 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10154   gecko-mediaplayer
10155 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10156 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10157   browser-plugin-gnash
10158 %
10159 </pre>
10160
10161 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10162 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10163 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10164 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10165
10166 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10167 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10168 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10169 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10170 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10171 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10172
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="tags">
10175
10176
10177         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>.
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/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
10187       </div>
10188       <div class="date">
10189         16th January 2013
10190       </div>
10191       <div class="body">
10192         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10193 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10194 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10195 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10196 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10197 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10198 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10199 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10200
10201 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10202 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10203 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10204 can be found on the
10205 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10206 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10207 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10208 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10209 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10210
10211 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10212
10213 <pre>
10214   count MIME type
10215   ----- -----------------------
10216      32 text/plain
10217      30 audio/mpeg
10218      29 image/png
10219      28 image/jpeg
10220      27 application/ogg
10221      26 audio/x-mp3
10222      25 image/tiff
10223      25 image/gif
10224      22 image/bmp
10225      22 audio/x-wav
10226      20 audio/x-flac
10227      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10228      18 video/x-ms-asf
10229      18 audio/x-musepack
10230      18 audio/x-mpeg
10231      18 application/x-ogg
10232      17 video/mpeg
10233      17 audio/x-scpls
10234      17 audio/ogg
10235      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10236 </pre>
10237
10238 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
10239
10240 <pre>
10241   count MIME type
10242   ----- -----------------------
10243      33 text/plain
10244      32 image/png
10245      32 image/jpeg
10246      29 audio/mpeg
10247      27 image/gif
10248      26 image/tiff
10249      26 application/ogg
10250      25 audio/x-mp3
10251      22 image/bmp
10252      21 audio/x-wav
10253      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10254      19 audio/x-mpeg
10255      18 video/mpeg
10256      18 audio/x-scpls
10257      18 audio/x-flac
10258      18 application/x-ogg
10259      17 video/x-ms-asf
10260      17 text/html
10261      17 audio/x-musepack
10262      16 image/x-xbitmap
10263 </pre>
10264
10265 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
10266
10267 <pre>
10268   count MIME type
10269   ----- -----------------------
10270      31 text/plain
10271      31 image/png
10272      31 image/jpeg
10273      29 audio/mpeg
10274      28 application/ogg
10275      27 image/gif
10276      26 image/tiff
10277      26 audio/x-mp3
10278      23 audio/x-wav
10279      22 image/bmp
10280      21 audio/x-flac
10281      20 audio/x-mpegurl
10282      19 audio/x-mpeg
10283      18 video/x-ms-asf
10284      18 video/mpeg
10285      18 audio/x-scpls
10286      18 application/x-ogg
10287      17 audio/x-musepack
10288      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10289      16 video/x-msvideo
10290 </pre>
10291
10292 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10293 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
10294 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10295 issues.</p>
10296
10297 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
10298 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
10299
10300       </div>
10301       <div class="tags">
10302
10303
10304         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>.
10305
10306
10307       </div>
10308     </div>
10309     <div class="padding"></div>
10310
10311     <div class="entry">
10312       <div class="title">
10313         <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>
10314       </div>
10315       <div class="date">
10316         15th January 2013
10317       </div>
10318       <div class="body">
10319         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
10320 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
10321 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
10322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
10323 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10324 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10325 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10326 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10327 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10328 packages.</p>
10329
10330 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10331 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10332 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10333 modalias.</p>
10334
10335 <p><blockquote>
10336 Package: package-name
10337 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
10338 </blockquote></p>
10339
10340 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10341 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
10342
10343 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10344 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
10345
10346 <p><blockquote>
10347 Package: cheese
10348 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
10349 </blockquote></p>
10350
10351 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10352 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
10353
10354 <p><blockquote>
10355 Package: pcmciautils
10356 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10357 </blockquote></p>
10358
10359 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10360 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
10361
10362 <p><blockquote>
10363 Package: colorhug-client
10364 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
10365 </blockquote></p>
10366
10367 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10368 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10369 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
10370
10371 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10372 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10373 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10374 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10375 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
10376 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10377 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
10378 Raring.</p>
10379
10380 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10381 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10382 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
10383 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
10384 try the
10385 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
10386 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10387 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10388 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
10389
10390 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10391 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
10392
10393 <p><blockquote>
10394 % ./hw-support-lookup
10395 <br>yubikey-personalization
10396 <br>%
10397 </blockquote></p>
10398
10399 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10400 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
10401
10402 <p><blockquote>
10403 % ./hw-support-lookup
10404 <br>pcmciautils
10405 <br>%
10406 </blockquote></p>
10407
10408 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10409 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
10410 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
10411
10412 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10413 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
10414 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10415 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
10416 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10417 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10418 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
10419 see if it work.</p>
10420
10421 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10422 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10423 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10424 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10425
10426       </div>
10427       <div class="tags">
10428
10429
10430         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>.
10431
10432
10433       </div>
10434     </div>
10435     <div class="padding"></div>
10436
10437     <div class="entry">
10438       <div class="title">
10439         <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>
10440       </div>
10441       <div class="date">
10442         14th January 2013
10443       </div>
10444       <div class="body">
10445         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10446 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10447 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10448 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
10449 in
10450 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10451 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
10452
10453 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
10454
10455 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10456 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
10457 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
10458 &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;,
10459 &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
10460 &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;.
10461
10462 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10463 this shell script:</p>
10464
10465 <pre>
10466 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10467 </pre>
10468
10469 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10470 using modinfo:</p>
10471
10472 <pre>
10473 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10474 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10475 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10476 %
10477 </pre>
10478
10479 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
10480
10481 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
10482 Bridge memory controller:</p>
10483
10484 <p><blockquote>
10485 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10486 </blockquote></p>
10487
10488 <p>This represent these values:</p>
10489
10490 <pre>
10491  v   00008086  (vendor)
10492  d   00002770  (device)
10493  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
10494  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
10495  bc  06        (bus class)
10496  sc  00        (bus subclass)
10497  i   00        (interface)
10498 </pre>
10499
10500 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
10501 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10502 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
10503 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
10504
10505 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10506 means.</p>
10507
10508 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
10509
10510 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
10511 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
10512
10513 <p><blockquote>
10514 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10515 </blockquote></p>
10516
10517 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
10518
10519 <pre>
10520  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
10521  p    0001  (device product)
10522  d    0206  (bcddevice)
10523  dc     09  (device class)
10524  dsc    00  (device subclass)
10525  dp     00  (device protocol)
10526  ic     09  (interface class)
10527  isc    00  (interface subclass)
10528  ip     00  (interface protocol)
10529 </pre>
10530
10531 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
10532 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
10533 these alias entries show up:</p>
10534
10535 <p><blockquote>
10536 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10537 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10538 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10539 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10540 </blockquote></p>
10541
10542 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10543 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10544 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
10545
10546 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
10547
10548 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
10549 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
10550
10551 <p><blockquote>
10552 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10553 </blockquote></p>
10554
10555 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
10556
10557 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
10558
10559 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10560 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10561 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
10562
10563 <p><blockquote>
10564 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10565 </blockquote></p>
10566
10567 <p>The values present are</p>
10568
10569 <pre>
10570  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
10571  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10572  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
10573  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
10574  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
10575  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
10576  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
10577  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
10578  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
10579  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
10580  ct   10             (chassis type)
10581  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10582 </pre>
10583
10584 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10585 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10586
10587 <pre>
10588   3 Desktop
10589   4 Low Profile Desktop
10590   5 Pizza Box
10591   6 Mini Tower
10592   7 Tower
10593   8 Portable
10594   9 Laptop
10595  10 Notebook
10596  11 Hand Held
10597  12 Docking Station
10598  13 All In One
10599  14 Sub Notebook
10600  15 Space-saving
10601  16 Lunch Box
10602  17 Main Server Chassis
10603  18 Expansion Chassis
10604  19 Sub Chassis
10605  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10606  21 Peripheral Chassis
10607  22 RAID Chassis
10608  23 Rack Mount Chassis
10609  24 Sealed-case PC
10610  25 Multi-system
10611  26 CompactPCI
10612  27 AdvancedTCA
10613  28 Blade
10614  29 Blade Enclosing
10615 </pre>
10616
10617 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10618 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10619 claim it is a desktop.</p>
10620
10621 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
10622
10623 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
10624 test machine:</p>
10625
10626 <p><blockquote>
10627 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10628 </blockquote></p>
10629
10630 <p>The values present are</p>
10631
10632 <pre>
10633   ty  01  (type)
10634   pr  00  (prototype)
10635   id  00  (id)
10636   ex  00  (extra)
10637 </pre>
10638
10639 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
10640 the valid values are.</p>
10641
10642 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
10643
10644 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10645 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10646 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10647 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10648 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
10649 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10650 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
10651
10652 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
10653
10654 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10655 one can use the following shell script:</p>
10656
10657 <pre>
10658   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10659     echo "$id" ; \
10660     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
10661   done
10662 </pre>
10663
10664 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10665 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
10666
10667 <pre>
10668   acpi:ACPI0003:
10669     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10670   acpi:device:
10671   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10672   acpi:IBM0068:
10673     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10674     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10675     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10676     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10677   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10678     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10679     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10680     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10681   [...]
10682 </pre>
10683
10684 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10685 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10686 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10687 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10688
10689 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
10690 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
10691 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
10692
10693       </div>
10694       <div class="tags">
10695
10696
10697         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>.
10698
10699
10700       </div>
10701     </div>
10702     <div class="padding"></div>
10703
10704     <div class="entry">
10705       <div class="title">
10706         <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>
10707       </div>
10708       <div class="date">
10709         10th January 2013
10710       </div>
10711       <div class="body">
10712         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
10713 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
10714 Launcher and updated the Debian package
10715 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
10716 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
10717 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
10718 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
10719 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
10720 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
10721 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
10722 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
10723 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
10724 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
10725 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
10726 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
10727 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
10728 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
10729 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
10730
10731       </div>
10732       <div class="tags">
10733
10734
10735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10736
10737
10738       </div>
10739     </div>
10740     <div class="padding"></div>
10741
10742     <div class="entry">
10743       <div class="title">
10744         <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>
10745       </div>
10746       <div class="date">
10747          9th January 2013
10748       </div>
10749       <div class="body">
10750         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
10751 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
10752 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
10753 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
10754 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
10755 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
10756 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
10757 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
10758 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
10759 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
10760 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
10761
10762 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
10763 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
10764 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
10765 simple:
10766
10767 <ul>
10768
10769 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
10770   starting when a user log in.</li>
10771
10772 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
10773   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
10774
10775 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
10776   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
10777   packages.</li>
10778
10779 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
10780   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
10781
10782 </ul>
10783
10784 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
10785 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
10786 discover database to find packages and
10787 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
10788 packages.</p>
10789
10790 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
10791 draft package is now checked into
10792 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10793 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
10794 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
10795 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
10796 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
10797 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
10798 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
10799 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
10800 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
10801 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
10802 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
10803 because of the freeze).</p>
10804
10805 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
10806 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
10807 inserted):</p>
10808
10809 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
10810
10811 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
10812 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
10813 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
10814
10815 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
10816 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
10817 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
10818 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
10819 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
10820 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
10821 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
10822
10823 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
10824 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
10825 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
10826 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
10827 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
10828 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
10829 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
10830 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
10831 not be installed?</p>
10832
10833 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
10834 please send me an email. :)</p>
10835
10836       </div>
10837       <div class="tags">
10838
10839
10840         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>.
10841
10842
10843       </div>
10844     </div>
10845     <div class="padding"></div>
10846
10847     <div class="entry">
10848       <div class="title">
10849         <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>
10850       </div>
10851       <div class="date">
10852          2nd January 2013
10853       </div>
10854       <div class="body">
10855         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
10856 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
10857 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
10858 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
10859 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
10860 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
10861 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
10862 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
10863 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
10864 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
10865
10866 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
10867 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
10868 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
10869
10870       </div>
10871       <div class="tags">
10872
10873
10874         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>.
10875
10876
10877       </div>
10878     </div>
10879     <div class="padding"></div>
10880
10881     <div class="entry">
10882       <div class="title">
10883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10884       </div>
10885       <div class="date">
10886         28th December 2012
10887       </div>
10888       <div class="body">
10889         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
10890 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10891 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
10892 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
10893 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
10894 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
10895 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
10896 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
10897 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
10898 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
10899 followed by many others. :)</p>
10900
10901 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
10902 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
10903 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
10904 you want to donate to the project.</p>
10905
10906       </div>
10907       <div class="tags">
10908
10909
10910         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>.
10911
10912
10913       </div>
10914     </div>
10915     <div class="padding"></div>
10916
10917     <div class="entry">
10918       <div class="title">
10919         <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>
10920       </div>
10921       <div class="date">
10922         25th December 2012
10923       </div>
10924       <div class="body">
10925         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
10926 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
10927
10928 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
10929 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
10930 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
10931 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
10932 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
10933 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
10934 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
10935 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
10936 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
10937 name.</p>
10938
10939 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
10940 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
10941 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
10942
10943 <blockquote><pre>
10944 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
10945 cd bitcoin
10946 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
10947 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
10948 </pre></blockquote>
10949
10950 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
10951 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
10952 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
10953 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
10954 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
10955 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
10956 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
10957 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
10958 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
10959
10960 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10961 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10962 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10963
10964       </div>
10965       <div class="tags">
10966
10967
10968         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>.
10969
10970
10971       </div>
10972     </div>
10973     <div class="padding"></div>
10974
10975     <div class="entry">
10976       <div class="title">
10977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
10978       </div>
10979       <div class="date">
10980         21st December 2012
10981       </div>
10982       <div class="body">
10983         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
10984 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
10985 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
10986 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
10987 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
10988 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
10989 is now maintained by a
10990 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
10991 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
10992 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
10993 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
10994 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
10995 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
10996 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
10997 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
10998 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
10999 Corallo in a
11000 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11001 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11002 Debian package.</p>
11003
11004 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11005 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11006 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11007 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11008 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11009 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11010 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11011 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11012 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11013 new version to unstable.
11014
11015 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11016 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11017 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11018 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11019 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11020 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11021 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11022 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11023 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11024 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11025 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11026 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11027 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11028 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11029 have not tested them.</p>
11030
11031 <p>My
11032 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11033 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11034 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11035 years ago, as can be
11036 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11037 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11038 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11039 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11040 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11041 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11042 the same address as last time,
11043 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11044
11045       </div>
11046       <div class="tags">
11047
11048
11049         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>.
11050
11051
11052       </div>
11053     </div>
11054     <div class="padding"></div>
11055
11056     <div class="entry">
11057       <div class="title">
11058         <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>
11059       </div>
11060       <div class="date">
11061         18th December 2012
11062       </div>
11063       <div class="body">
11064         <p>A few days ago I came across
11065 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11066 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11067 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11068 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11069 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11070 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11071 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11072 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11073 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11074
11075 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11076 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11077 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11078 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11079
11080 <blockquote><pre>
11081 2004-05-27 Book Store
11082       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11083       Liabilities:Visa
11084 </pre></blockquote>
11085
11086 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11087 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11088 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11089 Spang</a>,
11090 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11091 Keen</a>,
11092 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11093 Cantino</a> and
11094 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11095 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11096 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11097 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11098 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11099
11100 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11101 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11102 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11103 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11104 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11105
11106 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11107 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11108 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11109 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11110 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11111 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11112 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11113 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11114 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11115
11116       </div>
11117       <div class="tags">
11118
11119
11120         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>.
11121
11122
11123       </div>
11124     </div>
11125     <div class="padding"></div>
11126
11127     <div class="entry">
11128       <div class="title">
11129         <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>
11130       </div>
11131       <div class="date">
11132          6th December 2012
11133       </div>
11134       <div class="body">
11135         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11136 Oslo</a>, we use the
11137 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11138 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11139 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11140 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11141 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11142 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11143 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11144 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11145 Python.</p>
11146
11147 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11148 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11149 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11150 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11151 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11152 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11153
11154 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11155 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11156 user currently logged in:</p>
11157
11158 <blockquote><pre>
11159 #!/usr/bin/env python
11160 import getpass
11161 import xmlrpclib
11162 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11163 username = getpass.getuser()
11164 password = getpass.getpass()
11165 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11166 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11167 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11168 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11169 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11170 print result
11171 </pre></blockquote>
11172
11173 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11174 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11175
11176       </div>
11177       <div class="tags">
11178
11179
11180         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>.
11181
11182
11183       </div>
11184     </div>
11185     <div class="padding"></div>
11186
11187     <div class="entry">
11188       <div class="title">
11189         <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>
11190       </div>
11191       <div class="date">
11192         17th November 2012
11193       </div>
11194       <div class="body">
11195         <p>While working on a
11196 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11197 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11198 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11199 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11200 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11201 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11202
11203 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11204 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11205 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11206 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11207 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11208 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11209 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11210 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11211 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11212 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11213 arguments.</p>
11214
11215 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11216 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11217 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11218 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11219 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11220 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11221 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11222 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11223
11224 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11225 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11226 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11227 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11228 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11229 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11230 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11231 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11232 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11233 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11234 correct right holder.</p>
11235
11236 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
11237 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
11238 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
11239 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
11240 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
11241 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
11242 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
11243 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
11244 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
11245 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
11246 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
11247 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
11248 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
11249 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
11250
11251 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
11252 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
11253 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
11254
11255 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
11256 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
11257
11258       </div>
11259       <div class="tags">
11260
11261
11262         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>.
11263
11264
11265       </div>
11266     </div>
11267     <div class="padding"></div>
11268
11269     <div class="entry">
11270       <div class="title">
11271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
11272       </div>
11273       <div class="date">
11274         14th November 2012
11275       </div>
11276       <div class="body">
11277         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
11278 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11279 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
11280 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
11281 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
11282 the people behind the German
11283 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
11284 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
11285 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
11286
11287 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11288
11289 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
11290 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
11291 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
11292
11293 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
11294 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
11295 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
11296 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
11297 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
11298 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
11299
11300 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
11301 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
11302 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
11303 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
11304 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
11305 relationship management and the communication processes in the
11306 project.</p>
11307
11308 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
11309 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
11310 and a yoga teacher.</p>
11311
11312 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11313 project?</strong></p>
11314
11315 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
11316
11317 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
11318 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
11319 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
11320 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
11321 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
11322 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
11323 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
11324 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
11325 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
11326 parents.</p>
11327
11328 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
11329 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
11330 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
11331 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
11332 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
11333 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
11334 Germany.</p>
11335
11336 <p>For information about our school project you can read
11337 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
11338 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
11339
11340 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11341 Edu?</strong></p>
11342
11343 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
11344 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
11345
11346 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
11347 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
11348 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
11349 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
11350 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
11351 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
11352 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
11353 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
11354 teachers, parents...</p>
11355
11356 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11357 Edu?</strong></p>
11358
11359 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
11360 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11361
11362 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
11363 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
11364 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
11365 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
11366 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11367
11368 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
11369 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
11370 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
11371 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
11372 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
11373 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
11374 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11375
11376 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11377
11378 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
11379 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
11380 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
11381 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
11382
11383 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11384 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11385
11386 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
11387 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
11388 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
11389 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
11390 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
11391
11392 <ul>
11393
11394 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
11395 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
11396 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
11397
11398 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
11399 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
11400 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
11401 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
11402 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
11403 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
11404 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
11405
11406 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
11407 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
11408 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
11409 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
11410
11411 </ul>
11412
11413       </div>
11414       <div class="tags">
11415
11416
11417         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>.
11418
11419
11420       </div>
11421     </div>
11422     <div class="padding"></div>
11423
11424     <div class="entry">
11425       <div class="title">
11426         <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>
11427       </div>
11428       <div class="date">
11429          4th November 2012
11430       </div>
11431       <div class="body">
11432         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
11433 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
11434 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
11435 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
11436 see how a member of the bitcoin community
11437 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
11438 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
11439 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
11440 competition.  My thoughts go to the
11441 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
11442 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
11443 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
11444 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
11445 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
11446
11447 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
11448 that the community already seem to have
11449 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
11450 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
11451 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
11452 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
11453 wealth is available.</p>
11454
11455       </div>
11456       <div class="tags">
11457
11458
11459         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>.
11460
11461
11462       </div>
11463     </div>
11464     <div class="padding"></div>
11465
11466     <div class="entry">
11467       <div class="title">
11468         <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>
11469       </div>
11470       <div class="date">
11471         26th October 2012
11472       </div>
11473       <div class="body">
11474         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
11475 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
11476 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
11477 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
11478 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
11479 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
11480 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
11481 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
11482 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
11483 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
11484 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
11485 it every time.</p>
11486
11487 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
11488 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
11489 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
11490 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
11491 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
11492 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
11493 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
11494 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
11495 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
11496 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
11497 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
11498 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
11499
11500 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
11501 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
11502 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
11503 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
11504 article: First the unplanned outage:
11505
11506 <blockquote><pre>
11507 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
11508 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
11509 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
11510 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
11511 Duration:    40 minutes
11512 Scope:       Exchange 2003
11513 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
11514              a cluster failover.
11515
11516 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
11517              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
11518 Technician:  [xxx]
11519 </pre></blockquote>
11520
11521 Next the planned outage:
11522
11523 <blockquote><pre>
11524 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
11525 Severity:    Major (Planned)
11526 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
11527 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
11528 Duration:    10 hours
11529 Scope:       H2 Transport
11530 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
11531              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
11532              4510s.
11533 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
11534              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
11535              connectivity.
11536 Technician:  [xxx]
11537 </pre></blockquote>
11538
11539 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
11540 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
11541 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
11542 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
11543 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
11544 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
11545 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
11546
11547 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
11548 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
11549 university too.  We do register
11550 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
11551 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
11552 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
11553 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
11554 for other sites to consider too?</p>
11555
11556       </div>
11557       <div class="tags">
11558
11559
11560         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/usenix">usenix</a>.
11561
11562
11563       </div>
11564     </div>
11565     <div class="padding"></div>
11566
11567     <div class="entry">
11568       <div class="title">
11569         <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>
11570       </div>
11571       <div class="date">
11572         22nd October 2012
11573       </div>
11574       <div class="body">
11575         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
11576 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
11577 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
11578 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
11579 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
11580 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
11581 background information is available in Norwegian from
11582 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11583 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11584 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11585 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11586 willing to
11587 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11588 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11589 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11590 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11591 sounded like
11592 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11593 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11594 later.</p>
11595
11596 <p>And thought this action is
11597 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
11598 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
11599 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
11600 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
11601 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
11602 rights.</p>
11603
11604 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
11605 unacceptable terms.  For example
11606 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
11607 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
11608 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
11609 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
11610 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
11611
11612 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
11613 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
11614 restored the account of the user, as reported by
11615 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
11616 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
11617 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
11618 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
11619 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
11620 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
11621 reading two opinions from
11622 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
11623 Phipps</a> and
11624 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
11625 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
11626 details about the original story.</p>
11627
11628       </div>
11629       <div class="tags">
11630
11631
11632         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>.
11633
11634
11635       </div>
11636     </div>
11637     <div class="padding"></div>
11638
11639     <div class="entry">
11640       <div class="title">
11641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
11642       </div>
11643       <div class="date">
11644         18th October 2012
11645       </div>
11646       <div class="body">
11647         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
11648 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
11649 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
11650 across a marvellous drawing by
11651 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
11652 visualising some of what is going on.
11653
11654 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
11655 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
11656
11657 <blockquote>
11658 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
11659 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
11660 </blockquote>
11661
11662 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
11663 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
11664 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
11665 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
11666 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
11667 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
11668
11669       </div>
11670       <div class="tags">
11671
11672
11673         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>.
11674
11675
11676       </div>
11677     </div>
11678     <div class="padding"></div>
11679
11680     <div class="entry">
11681       <div class="title">
11682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
11683       </div>
11684       <div class="date">
11685         12th October 2012
11686       </div>
11687       <div class="body">
11688         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
11689 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
11690 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
11691 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
11692 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
11693 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
11694 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
11695 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
11696 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
11697 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
11698 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
11699 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
11700 matter".</p>
11701
11702 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
11703 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
11704 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
11705 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
11706 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
11707 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
11708 to argue its side.</p>
11709
11710 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
11711 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
11712 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
11713 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
11714
11715 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
11716 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
11717 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
11718
11719       </div>
11720       <div class="tags">
11721
11722
11723         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>.
11724
11725
11726       </div>
11727     </div>
11728     <div class="padding"></div>
11729
11730     <div class="entry">
11731       <div class="title">
11732         <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>
11733       </div>
11734       <div class="date">
11735          3rd October 2012
11736       </div>
11737       <div class="body">
11738         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
11739 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
11740 the computer science book collection available in his local
11741 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
11742 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
11743 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
11744 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
11745 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
11746 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
11747 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
11748 recently published books.</p>
11749
11750 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
11751 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
11752 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
11753 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
11754 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
11755 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
11756 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
11757 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
11758 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
11759 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
11760 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
11761 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
11762 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
11763 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
11764 for the library that evening.</p>
11765
11766 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
11767 going to know that for example
11768 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
11769 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
11770 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
11771 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
11772 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
11773 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
11774 book right away.</p>
11775
11776       </div>
11777       <div class="tags">
11778
11779
11780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11781
11782
11783       </div>
11784     </div>
11785     <div class="padding"></div>
11786
11787     <div class="entry">
11788       <div class="title">
11789         <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>
11790       </div>
11791       <div class="date">
11792         23rd September 2012
11793       </div>
11794       <div class="body">
11795         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
11796 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
11797 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
11798 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
11799 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
11800 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
11801
11802 When I started, I
11803 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
11804 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
11805 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
11806 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
11807 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
11808 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
11809 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
11810
11811 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
11812
11813 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
11814 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
11815 the project files currently available from
11816 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11817
11818 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
11819 the updated
11820 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
11821 and
11822 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
11823 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
11824 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
11825 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
11826
11827       </div>
11828       <div class="tags">
11829
11830
11831         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>.
11832
11833
11834       </div>
11835     </div>
11836     <div class="padding"></div>
11837
11838     <div class="entry">
11839       <div class="title">
11840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
11841       </div>
11842       <div class="date">
11843         17th September 2012
11844       </div>
11845       <div class="body">
11846         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
11847 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11848 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
11849 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
11850 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
11851 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
11852 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
11853
11854 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11855
11856 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
11857 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
11858 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
11859 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
11860 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
11861 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
11862 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
11863 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
11864 training is anyway very important</p>
11865
11866 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
11867 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
11868 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
11869 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
11870 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
11871
11872 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11873 project?</strong></p>
11874
11875 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
11876 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
11877 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
11878 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
11879 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
11880 hole.</p>
11881
11882 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11883 Edu?</strong></p>
11884
11885 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
11886 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
11887 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
11888 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
11889 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
11890 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
11891 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
11892 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
11893 hassle.</p>
11894
11895 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11896 Edu?</strong></p>
11897
11898 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
11899 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
11900 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
11901 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
11902 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
11903 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
11904 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
11905 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
11906
11907 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11908
11909 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
11910 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
11911 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
11912 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
11913 has the same...</p>
11914
11915 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
11916 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
11917 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
11918 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
11919
11920 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11921 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11922
11923 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
11924 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
11925 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
11926
11927 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
11928 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
11929 don't.</p>
11930
11931 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
11932 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
11933 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
11934 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
11935 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
11936 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
11937 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
11938
11939       </div>
11940       <div class="tags">
11941
11942
11943         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>.
11944
11945
11946       </div>
11947     </div>
11948     <div class="padding"></div>
11949
11950     <div class="entry">
11951       <div class="title">
11952         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
11953       </div>
11954       <div class="date">
11955         15th September 2012
11956       </div>
11957       <div class="body">
11958         <p>After the
11959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
11960 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
11961 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
11962 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
11963 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
11964 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
11965 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
11966 was
11967 <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
11968 formal working group should be formed.</p>
11969
11970 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
11971 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
11972 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
11973 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
11974 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
11975 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
11976 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
11977 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
11978
11979 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
11980 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
11981 IETF.</p>
11982
11983       </div>
11984       <div class="tags">
11985
11986
11987         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>.
11988
11989
11990       </div>
11991     </div>
11992     <div class="padding"></div>
11993
11994     <div class="entry">
11995       <div class="title">
11996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
11997       </div>
11998       <div class="date">
11999         12th September 2012
12000       </div>
12001       <div class="body">
12002         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12003 publication of of
12004 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12005 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12006 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12007 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12008 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12009 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12010 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12011 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12012 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12013 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12014
12015 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12016 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12017 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12018 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12019
12020 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12021 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12022
12023       </div>
12024       <div class="tags">
12025
12026
12027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
12028
12029
12030       </div>
12031     </div>
12032     <div class="padding"></div>
12033
12034     <div class="entry">
12035       <div class="title">
12036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12037       </div>
12038       <div class="date">
12039          7th September 2012
12040       </div>
12041       <div class="body">
12042         <p>As I
12043 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12044 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12045 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12046 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12047 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12048
12049 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12050 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12051 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12052 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12053
12054 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12055 PostScript formats at
12056 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12057 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12058
12059       </div>
12060       <div class="tags">
12061
12062
12063         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>.
12064
12065
12066       </div>
12067     </div>
12068     <div class="padding"></div>
12069
12070     <div class="entry">
12071       <div class="title">
12072         <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>
12073       </div>
12074       <div class="date">
12075         23rd August 2012
12076       </div>
12077       <div class="body">
12078         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12079 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12080 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12081 revisit the great site
12082 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12083 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12084 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12085
12086       </div>
12087       <div class="tags">
12088
12089
12090         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>.
12091
12092
12093       </div>
12094     </div>
12095     <div class="padding"></div>
12096
12097     <div class="entry">
12098       <div class="title">
12099         <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>
12100       </div>
12101       <div class="date">
12102         17th August 2012
12103       </div>
12104       <div class="body">
12105         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12106 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12107 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12108 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12109 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12110 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12111 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12112 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12113 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12114 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12115 summer I
12116 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12117 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12118 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12119
12120 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12121 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12122 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12123 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12124 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12125 progress:</p>
12126
12127 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12128
12129 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12130 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12131 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12132 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12133 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12134 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12135
12136 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12137 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12138 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12139 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12140 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12141 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12142 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12143 project files currently available from <a
12144 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12145
12146 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12147 the updated
12148 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12149 and
12150 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12151 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12152 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12153 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12154
12155       </div>
12156       <div class="tags">
12157
12158
12159         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>.
12160
12161
12162       </div>
12163     </div>
12164     <div class="padding"></div>
12165
12166     <div class="entry">
12167       <div class="title">
12168         <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>
12169       </div>
12170       <div class="date">
12171         10th August 2012
12172       </div>
12173       <div class="body">
12174         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12175 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12176 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12177 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12178 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12179 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12180 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12181 case for the language
12182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12183 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12184
12185 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12186 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12187 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12188 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12189 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12190
12191 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12192 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12193 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12194 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12195 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12196 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12197 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12198 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12199 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12200 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12201
12202 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12203 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12204 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12205 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12206 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12207 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12208 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12209 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12210 at the same time. :(</p>
12211
12212 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12213 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12214 processors. :(</p>
12215
12216 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12217
12218       </div>
12219       <div class="tags">
12220
12221
12222         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>.
12223
12224
12225       </div>
12226     </div>
12227     <div class="padding"></div>
12228
12229     <div class="entry">
12230       <div class="title">
12231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12232       </div>
12233       <div class="date">
12234         31st July 2012
12235       </div>
12236       <div class="body">
12237         <p>I tried to send this text to the
12238 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
12239 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
12240 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
12241 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
12242 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
12243 out.</p>
12244
12245 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
12246 learning curve at the moment.</p>
12247
12248 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
12249 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
12250 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
12251 available from
12252 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
12253 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
12254 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
12255 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
12256 Squeeze.</p>
12257
12258 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
12259 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
12260 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
12261 problems.</p>
12262
12263 <ul>
12264
12265 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
12266    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
12267    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
12268    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
12269    index references spanning several pages (See
12270    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
12271    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
12272    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
12273
12274 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
12275    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
12276    #683163</a>).</li>
12277
12278 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
12279    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
12280    footnote and text body, see
12281    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
12282    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
12283    refs listed are not right).</li>
12284
12285 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
12286
12287 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
12288    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
12289
12290 </ul>
12291
12292 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
12293 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
12294 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
12295
12296 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
12297
12298       </div>
12299       <div class="tags">
12300
12301
12302         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>.
12303
12304
12305       </div>
12306     </div>
12307     <div class="padding"></div>
12308
12309     <div class="entry">
12310       <div class="title">
12311         <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>
12312       </div>
12313       <div class="date">
12314         21st July 2012
12315       </div>
12316       <div class="body">
12317         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
12318 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
12319 norwegian version</a> of the book
12320 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12321 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
12322 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
12323 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
12324 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12325
12326 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
12327 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
12328 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
12329 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
12330 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
12331 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
12332 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
12333 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
12334 print. :)</p>
12335
12336 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
12337 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
12338 language.</p>
12339
12340       </div>
12341       <div class="tags">
12342
12343
12344         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>.
12345
12346
12347       </div>
12348     </div>
12349     <div class="padding"></div>
12350
12351     <div class="entry">
12352       <div class="title">
12353         <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>
12354       </div>
12355       <div class="date">
12356         16th July 2012
12357       </div>
12358       <div class="body">
12359         <p>I am currently working on a
12360 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
12361 to translate</a> the book
12362 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
12363 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
12364 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
12365 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
12366 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
12367 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
12368 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12369
12370 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
12371 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
12372 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
12373 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
12374 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
12375 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
12376 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
12377 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
12378 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
12379
12380       </div>
12381       <div class="tags">
12382
12383
12384         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>.
12385
12386
12387       </div>
12388     </div>
12389     <div class="padding"></div>
12390
12391     <div class="entry">
12392       <div class="title">
12393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
12394       </div>
12395       <div class="date">
12396          9th July 2012
12397       </div>
12398       <div class="body">
12399         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12400 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
12401 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
12402 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
12403 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
12404 to adjust and scale the just released
12405 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12406 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
12407 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
12408
12409 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12410
12411 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
12412 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
12413 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
12414 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
12415 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
12416 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
12417 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
12418 perspective when working with IT.</p>
12419
12420 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12421 project?</strong></p>
12422
12423 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
12424 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
12425 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
12426 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
12427 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
12428 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
12429
12430 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12431 Edu?</strong></p>
12432
12433 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
12434 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
12435 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
12436 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
12437 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
12438 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
12439 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
12440 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
12441 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
12442 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
12443 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
12444 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
12445 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
12446 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
12447 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
12448 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
12449 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
12450 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
12451 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
12452 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
12453 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
12454 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
12455 quicker to update.
12456
12457 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12458 Edu?</strong></p>
12459
12460 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
12461 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
12462 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
12463 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
12464 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
12465 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
12466
12467 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
12468 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
12469 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
12470 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
12471 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
12472 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
12473 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
12474 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
12475 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
12476 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
12477 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
12478 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
12479 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
12480 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
12481 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
12482
12483 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
12484 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
12485 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
12486 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
12487 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
12488 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
12489 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
12490 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
12491
12492 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
12493 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
12494 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
12495 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
12496 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
12497 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
12498 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
12499 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
12500 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
12501 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
12502 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
12503 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
12504 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
12505 sound file.</p>
12506
12507 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
12508 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
12509 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
12510 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
12511 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
12512 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
12513 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
12514 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
12515 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
12516
12517 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12518
12519 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
12520 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
12521 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
12522 )</p>
12523
12524 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12525 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12526
12527 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
12528 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
12529 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
12530 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
12531 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
12532 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
12533 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
12534 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
12535 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
12536 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
12537 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
12538 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
12539 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
12540 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
12541 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
12542
12543 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
12544 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
12545 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
12546 management with Airtime</a>,
12547 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
12548 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
12549 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
12550 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
12551 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
12552
12553       </div>
12554       <div class="tags">
12555
12556
12557         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>.
12558
12559
12560       </div>
12561     </div>
12562     <div class="padding"></div>
12563
12564     <div class="entry">
12565       <div class="title">
12566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
12567       </div>
12568       <div class="date">
12569          8th July 2012
12570       </div>
12571       <div class="body">
12572         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
12573 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
12574 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
12575 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
12576 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
12577 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
12578 Steinberg in his blog post
12579 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
12580 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
12581 spending of your tax money.</p>
12582
12583 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12584 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12585 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12586 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12587 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12588 purchases.</p>
12589
12590       </div>
12591       <div class="tags">
12592
12593
12594         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>.
12595
12596
12597       </div>
12598     </div>
12599     <div class="padding"></div>
12600
12601     <div class="entry">
12602       <div class="title">
12603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
12604       </div>
12605       <div class="date">
12606          7th July 2012
12607       </div>
12608       <div class="body">
12609         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12610 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
12611 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
12612 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
12613 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
12614 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
12615 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
12616 receive.  The software is
12617
12618 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
12619 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
12620 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
12621 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
12622 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
12623 Windows</a>.</p>
12624
12625 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
12626 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
12627
12628 <p><ul>
12629
12630   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
12631     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
12632
12633   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
12634     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
12635     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
12636     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
12637     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
12638     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
12639     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
12640     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
12641     </li>
12642
12643   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
12644     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
12645
12646   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
12647     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
12648
12649   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
12650     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
12651
12652   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
12653
12654   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
12655     formats </li>
12656
12657   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
12658     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
12659     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
12660     (as separate sets)</li>
12661
12662   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
12663     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
12664     percentage)</li>
12665
12666   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
12667     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
12668     memory):
12669     <ul>
12670       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
12671       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
12672       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
12673       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
12674       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
12675       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
12676       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
12677       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
12678       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
12679       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
12680           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
12681           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
12682           activity)</li>
12683       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
12684       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
12685     </ul></li>
12686
12687   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
12688     <ul>
12689       <li>Break periods</li>
12690       <li>For teacher(s):
12691         <ul>
12692           <li>Not available periods</li>
12693           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
12694           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12695           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12696           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12697           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12698
12699           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12700             days per week</li>
12701         </ul></li>
12702       <li>For students (sets):
12703         <ul>
12704           <li>Not available periods</li>
12705           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
12706           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12707           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12708           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12709           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12710
12711           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12712             days per week</li>
12713         </ul></li>
12714       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
12715         <ul>
12716           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
12717           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
12718           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
12719           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
12720           <li>End(s) students day</li>
12721           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
12722           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
12723             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
12724           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
12725           <li>Not overlapping</li>
12726           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
12727           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
12728         </ul></li>
12729     </ul></li>
12730
12731   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
12732     <ul>
12733       <li>Room not available periods</li>
12734       <li>For teacher(s):
12735         <ul>
12736           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12737           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12738           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12739         </ul>
12740       </li>
12741
12742       <li>For students (sets):
12743         <ul>
12744           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12745           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12746           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12747         </ul>
12748       </li>
12749       <li>Preferred room(s):
12750         <ul>
12751           <li>For a subject</li>
12752           <li>For an activity tag</li>
12753           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
12754           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
12755         </ul>
12756       </li>
12757
12758       <li>For a set of activities:
12759         <ul>
12760           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
12761         </ul>
12762       </li>
12763     </ul>
12764   </li>
12765 </ul></p>
12766
12767 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
12768 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
12769 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
12770 manually, check it out.
12771
12772 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
12773 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
12774 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
12775 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
12776 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
12777 section</a>.</p>
12778
12779       </div>
12780       <div class="tags">
12781
12782
12783         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>.
12784
12785
12786       </div>
12787     </div>
12788     <div class="padding"></div>
12789
12790     <div class="entry">
12791       <div class="title">
12792         <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>
12793       </div>
12794       <div class="date">
12795          3rd July 2012
12796       </div>
12797       <div class="body">
12798         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
12799 project (Norwegian version of
12800 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
12801 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
12802 a problem with the municipalities using
12803 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
12804 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
12805 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
12806 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
12807 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
12808 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
12809 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
12810 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
12811 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
12812 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
12813 the From: header.</p>
12814
12815 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
12816 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
12817 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
12818 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
12819 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
12820 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
12821 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
12822 behaviour.</p>
12823
12824 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
12825 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
12826 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
12827 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
12828 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
12829 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
12830 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
12831
12832       </div>
12833       <div class="tags">
12834
12835
12836         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>.
12837
12838
12839       </div>
12840     </div>
12841     <div class="padding"></div>
12842
12843     <div class="entry">
12844       <div class="title">
12845         <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>
12846       </div>
12847       <div class="date">
12848         26th June 2012
12849       </div>
12850       <div class="body">
12851         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
12852 another interview with the people behind
12853 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12854 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
12855 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
12856 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
12857 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
12858 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12859 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12860
12861 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12862
12863 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
12864 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
12865 ICT in schools</p>
12866
12867 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12868 project?</strong></p>
12869
12870 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
12871 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
12872 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
12873 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
12874
12875 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12876 Edu?</strong></p>
12877
12878 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
12879 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
12880 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
12881 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
12882
12883 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12884 Edu?</strong></p>
12885
12886 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
12887 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
12888 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
12889 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
12890 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
12891 technologies in school.</p>
12892
12893 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12894
12895 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
12896 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
12897 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
12898
12899 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12900 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12901
12902 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
12903 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
12904 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
12905 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
12906
12907 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
12908 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
12909 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
12910
12911 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
12912 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
12913 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
12914 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
12915 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
12916 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
12917 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
12918 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
12919 working there.</p>
12920
12921       </div>
12922       <div class="tags">
12923
12924
12925         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>.
12926
12927
12928       </div>
12929     </div>
12930     <div class="padding"></div>
12931
12932     <div class="entry">
12933       <div class="title">
12934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12935       </div>
12936       <div class="date">
12937         24th June 2012
12938       </div>
12939       <div class="body">
12940         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12941 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
12942 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
12943 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12944 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12945 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
12946 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12947 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12948 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
12949 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
12950 missing in my book.</p>
12951
12952 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12953 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12954 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12955 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12956 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
12957 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12958 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
12959
12960       </div>
12961       <div class="tags">
12962
12963
12964         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>.
12965
12966
12967       </div>
12968     </div>
12969     <div class="padding"></div>
12970
12971     <div class="entry">
12972       <div class="title">
12973         <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>
12974       </div>
12975       <div class="date">
12976         11th June 2012
12977       </div>
12978       <div class="body">
12979         <p>During my work on
12980 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
12981 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
12982 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
12983 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
12984 explanation.</p>
12985
12986 <p><ul>
12987
12988 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
12989 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
12990 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
12991 system depend on tasksel tasks in
12992 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
12993 installation.</li>
12994
12995 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
12996 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
12997 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
12998 at least try to enable it for these services:
12999 <ul>
13000
13001   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13002     quotas.</li>
13003   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13004   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13005   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13006   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13007   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13008
13009 </ul></li>
13010
13011 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13012 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13013 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13014 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13015
13016 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13017 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13018 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13019
13020 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13021 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13022 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13023 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13024 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13025 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13026
13027 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13028 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13029 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13030 in Wheezy.
13031
13032 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13033 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13034 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13035
13036 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13037 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13038 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13039 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13040
13041 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13042 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13043 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13044 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13045
13046 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13047 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13048 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13049
13050 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13051 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13052 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13053
13054 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13055 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13056 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13057 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13058 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13059
13060 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13061 <ul>
13062
13063 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13064 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13065 <li>and probably more?</li>
13066 </ul></li>
13067
13068 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13069 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13070 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13071 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13072 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13073 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13074 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13075 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13076
13077
13078 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13079 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13080 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13081 use.</li>
13082
13083 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13084 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13085 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13086 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13087 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13088
13089 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13090 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13091 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13092 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13093 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13094 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13095
13096 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13097 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13098 There are at least three implementations,
13099 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13100 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13101 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13102 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13103 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13104 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13105 given room.</li>
13106
13107 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13108 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13109 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13110 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13111 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13112 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13113 investigated.</li>
13114
13115 </ul></p>
13116
13117 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13118 version.</p>
13119
13120       </div>
13121       <div class="tags">
13122
13123
13124         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>.
13125
13126
13127       </div>
13128     </div>
13129     <div class="padding"></div>
13130
13131     <div class="entry">
13132       <div class="title">
13133         <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>
13134       </div>
13135       <div class="date">
13136          9th June 2012
13137       </div>
13138       <div class="body">
13139         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13140 <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
13141 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13142 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13143 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13144 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13145 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13146 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13147 be willing to pay for.</p>
13148
13149 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13150 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13151 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13152 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13153 Orwell</a>.</p>
13154
13155       </div>
13156       <div class="tags">
13157
13158
13159         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>.
13160
13161
13162       </div>
13163     </div>
13164     <div class="padding"></div>
13165
13166     <div class="entry">
13167       <div class="title">
13168         <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>
13169       </div>
13170       <div class="date">
13171          6th June 2012
13172       </div>
13173       <div class="body">
13174         <p>A few days ago
13175 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13176 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13177 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13178 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13179 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13180 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13181 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13182 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13183 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13184 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13185 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13186
13187 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13188 output:
13189
13190 <blockquote><pre>
13191 % 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>
13192 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": ""})
13193 %
13194 </pre></blockquote>
13195
13196 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13197 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13198 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13199
13200       </div>
13201       <div class="tags">
13202
13203
13204         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>.
13205
13206
13207       </div>
13208     </div>
13209     <div class="padding"></div>
13210
13211     <div class="entry">
13212       <div class="title">
13213         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13214       </div>
13215       <div class="date">
13216          2nd June 2012
13217       </div>
13218       <div class="body">
13219         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13220 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13221 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13222 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13223 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13224 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13225
13226 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13227
13228 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13229 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13230 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13231 by Angela).</p>
13232
13233 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13234 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13235 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
13236 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
13237 becoming an osteopath.</p>
13238
13239 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
13240 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
13241 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
13242 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
13243 skills with communication skills.</p>
13244
13245 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13246 project?</strong></p>
13247
13248 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
13249 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
13250 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
13251 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
13252 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
13253
13254 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
13255 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
13256 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
13257 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
13258 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
13259 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
13260 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
13261 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
13262 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
13263
13264 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
13265 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
13266 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
13267
13268 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
13269
13270 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
13271 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
13272 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
13273 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
13274 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
13275 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
13276 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
13277 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
13278 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
13279 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
13280 point.</p>
13281
13282 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
13283 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
13284 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
13285 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
13286 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
13287 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
13288
13289 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
13290 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
13291 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
13292 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
13293 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
13294 spare time.</p>
13295
13296 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
13297 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
13298 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
13299 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
13300 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
13301
13302 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
13303 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
13304 avoidance do exist.</p>
13305
13306 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
13307 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
13308 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
13309 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
13310 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
13311 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
13312 and probably a gain for all.</p>
13313
13314 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13315 Edu?</strong></p>
13316
13317 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
13318 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
13319 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
13320 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
13321 project communication, honest communication within the group of
13322 developers, etc.</p>
13323
13324 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13325 Edu?</strong></p>
13326
13327 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
13328
13329 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
13330 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
13331 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
13332 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
13333 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
13334 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
13335 contribute).</p>
13336
13337 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
13338 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
13339 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
13340 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
13341 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
13342 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
13343 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
13344 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
13345 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
13346 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13347
13348 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13349
13350 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
13351
13352 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
13353 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
13354 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
13355
13356 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
13357 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
13358 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
13359 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
13360
13361 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
13362 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
13363 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
13364 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
13365 whiteboard.</p>
13366
13367 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
13368
13369 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13370 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13371
13372 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
13373 enrol people.</p>
13374
13375       </div>
13376       <div class="tags">
13377
13378
13379         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>.
13380
13381
13382       </div>
13383     </div>
13384     <div class="padding"></div>
13385
13386     <div class="entry">
13387       <div class="title">
13388         <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>
13389       </div>
13390       <div class="date">
13391          1st June 2012
13392       </div>
13393       <div class="body">
13394         <p>A few years ago I wrote
13395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
13396 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
13397 I have learned from colleges here at the
13398 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
13399 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
13400 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
13401 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
13402 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
13403
13404 <p><pre>
13405 use strict;
13406 use warnings;
13407 use SOAP::Lite;
13408 use Data::Dumper;
13409 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
13410 my $App = 'test';
13411 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
13412 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
13413 my $s = SOAP::Lite
13414     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
13415     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
13416     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
13417     ;
13418 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
13419     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
13420     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
13421     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
13422 );
13423 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
13424 </pre></p>
13425
13426 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
13427
13428 <p><pre>
13429 $VAR1 = {
13430           'Asset' => {
13431                      'Entitlements' => {
13432                                        'EntitlementData' => [
13433                                                             {
13434                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13435                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13436                                                               'Provider' => '',
13437                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13438                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13439                                                             },
13440                                                             {
13441                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13442                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13443                                                               'Provider' => '',
13444                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13445                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13446                                                             },
13447                                                             {
13448                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13449                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
13450                                                               'Provider' => '',
13451                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13452                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13453                                                             }
13454                                                           ]
13455                                      },
13456                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
13457                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
13458                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
13459                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
13460                                           'Buid' => '2323',
13461                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
13462                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
13463                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
13464                                         }
13465                    }
13466         };
13467 </pre></p>
13468
13469 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
13470 service outside the
13471 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
13472 documentation</a>, and according to
13473 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
13474 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
13475 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
13476
13477 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
13478 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
13479
13480       </div>
13481       <div class="tags">
13482
13483
13484         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>.
13485
13486
13487       </div>
13488     </div>
13489     <div class="padding"></div>
13490
13491     <div class="entry">
13492       <div class="title">
13493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
13494       </div>
13495       <div class="date">
13496         31st May 2012
13497       </div>
13498       <div class="body">
13499         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
13500 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
13501 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
13502 running Debian Squeeze, where
13503 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
13504 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
13505 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
13506 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
13507 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
13508 another day.</p>
13509
13510 <p>After calibration, I get a
13511 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
13512 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
13513 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
13514 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
13515 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
13516 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
13517 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
13518 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
13519 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
13520 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
13521 and a simple</p>
13522
13523 <p><pre>
13524 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
13525 </pre></p>
13526
13527 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
13528 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
13529 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
13530 enough for now.</p>
13531
13532       </div>
13533       <div class="tags">
13534
13535
13536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13537
13538
13539       </div>
13540     </div>
13541     <div class="padding"></div>
13542
13543     <div class="entry">
13544       <div class="title">
13545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
13546       </div>
13547       <div class="date">
13548         27th May 2012
13549       </div>
13550       <div class="body">
13551         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
13552 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13553 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
13554 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
13555 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
13556 since then, helping to make sure the
13557 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13558 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
13559
13560 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13561
13562 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
13563 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
13564 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
13565 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
13566 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
13567 our computer network.</p>
13568
13569 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
13570 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
13571 (4 months).</p>
13572
13573 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13574 project?</strong></p>
13575
13576 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
13577 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
13578 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
13579 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
13580 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
13581 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13582 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13583 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13584 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13585 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13586 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13587 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13588 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13589 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13590
13591 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13592 Edu?</strong></p>
13593
13594 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13595 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13596 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
13597 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
13598 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
13599 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
13600 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
13601 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
13602
13603 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13604 Edu?</strong></p>
13605
13606 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
13607 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
13608 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
13609 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
13610 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
13611 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
13612 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
13613 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
13614 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
13615 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
13616 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
13617 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
13618
13619 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13620
13621 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
13622 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
13623 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
13624
13625 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13626 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13627
13628 <p><ol>
13629
13630 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
13631 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
13632 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
13633 developing.</li>
13634
13635 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
13636 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
13637 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
13638 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
13639 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
13640
13641 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
13642 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
13643 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
13644
13645 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
13646 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
13647 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
13648 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
13649
13650 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
13651 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
13652 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
13653
13654 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
13655
13656 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
13657 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
13658 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
13659 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
13660
13661 </ol></p>
13662
13663       </div>
13664       <div class="tags">
13665
13666
13667         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>.
13668
13669
13670       </div>
13671     </div>
13672     <div class="padding"></div>
13673
13674     <div class="entry">
13675       <div class="title">
13676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
13677       </div>
13678       <div class="date">
13679         26th May 2012
13680       </div>
13681       <div class="body">
13682         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
13683 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
13684 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
13685 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
13686 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
13687
13688 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
13689 <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>
13690 comment:</p>
13691
13692 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
13693 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
13694 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
13695 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
13696 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
13697 </blockquote></p>
13698
13699 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
13700 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
13701 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
13702 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
13703 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
13704 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
13705 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
13706 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
13707 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
13708 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
13709 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
13710 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
13711 of wasted effort.</p>
13712
13713 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
13714 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
13715 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
13716
13717 <p>See
13718 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
13719 and
13720 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
13721 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
13722 </blockquote></p>
13723
13724       </div>
13725       <div class="tags">
13726
13727
13728         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>.
13729
13730
13731       </div>
13732     </div>
13733     <div class="padding"></div>
13734
13735     <div class="entry">
13736       <div class="title">
13737         <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>
13738       </div>
13739       <div class="date">
13740         18th May 2012
13741       </div>
13742       <div class="body">
13743         <p>In january, I
13744 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
13745 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
13746 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
13747 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
13748 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
13749 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
13750 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
13751 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
13752 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
13753 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
13754
13755 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
13756 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
13757 drivers. :)</p>
13758
13759       </div>
13760       <div class="tags">
13761
13762
13763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13764
13765
13766       </div>
13767     </div>
13768     <div class="padding"></div>
13769
13770     <div class="entry">
13771       <div class="title">
13772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
13773       </div>
13774       <div class="date">
13775         13th May 2012
13776       </div>
13777       <div class="body">
13778         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
13779 publish another interview with the people behind
13780 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13781 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
13782 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
13783 details get right before release.
13784
13785 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13786
13787 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
13788 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
13789 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
13790 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
13791 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
13792 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
13793 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
13794 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
13795
13796 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
13797 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
13798 home since 2006.</p>
13799
13800 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13801 project?</strong></p>
13802
13803 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
13804 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
13805 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
13806 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
13807 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
13808 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
13809
13810 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
13811 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
13812 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
13813 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
13814 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
13815 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
13816 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
13817 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
13818 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
13819 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
13820 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
13821 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
13822 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
13823 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
13824 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
13825 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
13826
13827 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13828 Edu?</strong></p>
13829
13830 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
13831 for me as today.</p>
13832
13833 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
13834
13835 <p><ul>
13836
13837 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
13838 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
13839
13840 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
13841 cost.</li>
13842
13843 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
13844 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
13845 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
13846 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
13847 server</li>
13848
13849 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
13850 school.</li>
13851
13852 </ul></p>
13853
13854 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
13855 came up in this way:</p>
13856
13857 <p><ul>
13858
13859 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
13860 now.</li>
13861
13862 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
13863 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
13864 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
13865
13866 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
13867 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
13868 interfaces used in the past.</li>
13869
13870 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
13871 different needs.</li>
13872
13873 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
13874
13875 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
13876 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
13877 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
13878
13879 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
13880 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
13881
13882 </ul></p>
13883
13884 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13885 Edu?</strong></p>
13886
13887 <p><ul>
13888
13889 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
13890 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
13891 whole municipality areas.</li>
13892
13893 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
13894 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
13895 politicians.</li>
13896
13897 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
13898
13899 </ul></p>
13900
13901 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13902
13903 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
13904 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
13905 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
13906 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
13907 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
13908 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
13909
13910 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
13911 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
13912 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
13913 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
13914 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
13915
13916 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13917 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13918
13919 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
13920 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
13921 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
13922
13923       </div>
13924       <div class="tags">
13925
13926
13927         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>.
13928
13929
13930       </div>
13931     </div>
13932     <div class="padding"></div>
13933
13934     <div class="entry">
13935       <div class="title">
13936         <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>
13937       </div>
13938       <div class="date">
13939         30th April 2012
13940       </div>
13941       <div class="body">
13942         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
13943 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
13944
13945 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
13946 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
13947 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
13948 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
13949 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
13950 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
13951 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
13952 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
13953 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
13954 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
13955 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
13956 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
13957 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
13958 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
13959 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
13960 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
13961
13962 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
13963 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
13964 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
13965 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
13966 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
13967 finally found a Danish supplier
13968 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
13969 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
13970 days ago.</p>
13971
13972 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
13973 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
13974 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
13975 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
13976 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
13977 toys.</p>
13978
13979       </div>
13980       <div class="tags">
13981
13982
13983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13984
13985
13986       </div>
13987     </div>
13988     <div class="padding"></div>
13989
13990     <div class="entry">
13991       <div class="title">
13992         <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>
13993       </div>
13994       <div class="date">
13995         26th April 2012
13996       </div>
13997       <div class="body">
13998         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
13999 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14000 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14001 that the video editor application included with
14002 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14003 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14004 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14005
14006 <p><blockquote>
14007 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14008 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14009 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14010 </blockquote></p>
14011
14012 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14013
14014 <p><blockquote>
14015 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14016 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14017 </blockquote></p>
14018
14019 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14020 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14021 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14022 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14023 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14024 video.  AMR is
14025 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14026 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14027 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14028 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14029 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14030 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14031 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14032
14033 <p>I know why I prefer
14034 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14035 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14036
14037       </div>
14038       <div class="tags">
14039
14040
14041         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/h264">h264</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>.
14042
14043
14044       </div>
14045     </div>
14046     <div class="padding"></div>
14047
14048     <div class="entry">
14049       <div class="title">
14050         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14051       </div>
14052       <div class="date">
14053         19th April 2012
14054       </div>
14055       <div class="body">
14056         <p>Here in Norway, the
14057 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14058 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14059 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14060 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14061 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14062 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14063 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14064 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14065 on the same level.</p>
14066
14067 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14068 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14069 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14070 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14071 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14072 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14073 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14074 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14075 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14076 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14077 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14078 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14079 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14080 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14081 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14082 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14083 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14084 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14085
14086 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14087 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14088 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14089 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14090 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14091 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14092 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14093 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14094
14095 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14096 from Simon Phipps
14097 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14098 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14099
14100 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14101 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14102 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14103 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14104 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14105 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14106 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14107 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14108 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14109
14110       </div>
14111       <div class="tags">
14112
14113
14114         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>.
14115
14116
14117       </div>
14118     </div>
14119     <div class="padding"></div>
14120
14121     <div class="entry">
14122       <div class="title">
14123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14124       </div>
14125       <div class="date">
14126         15th April 2012
14127       </div>
14128       <div class="body">
14129         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14130 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14131 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14132 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14133 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14134 up in the recently released
14135 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14136 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14137
14138 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14139
14140 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14141 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14142 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14143 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14144 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14145 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14146
14147 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14148 project?</strong></p>
14149
14150 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14151 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14152 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14153 contributing.</p>
14154
14155 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14156 Edu?</strong></p>
14157
14158 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14159 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14160 Debian Project!</p>
14161
14162 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14163 Edu?</strong></p>
14164
14165 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14166 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14167 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14168 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14169 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14170 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14171 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14172
14173 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14174 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14175
14176 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14177
14178 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14179 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14180 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14181 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14182
14183 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14184 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14185
14186 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14187 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14188 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14189 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14190 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14191 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14192 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14193
14194 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14195 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14196 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14197 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14198 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14199 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14200 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14201 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14202
14203       </div>
14204       <div class="tags">
14205
14206
14207         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>.
14208
14209
14210       </div>
14211     </div>
14212     <div class="padding"></div>
14213
14214     <div class="entry">
14215       <div class="title">
14216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14217       </div>
14218       <div class="date">
14219          8th April 2012
14220       </div>
14221       <div class="body">
14222         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14223 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14224 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14225 contributor to the
14226 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14227 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14228
14229 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14230
14231 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14232 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14233
14234 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14235 project?</strong></p>
14236
14237 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
14238 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
14239 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
14240 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
14241 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
14242 "localisation".</p>
14243
14244 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14245 Edu?</strong></p>
14246
14247 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14248 Edu?</strong></p>
14249
14250 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
14251 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
14252 education system.</p>
14253
14254 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
14255 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
14256 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
14257 money on the latest hardware.</p>
14258
14259 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14260
14261 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
14262 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
14263 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
14264
14265 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14266 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14267
14268 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
14269 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
14270 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
14271
14272       </div>
14273       <div class="tags">
14274
14275
14276         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>.
14277
14278
14279       </div>
14280     </div>
14281     <div class="padding"></div>
14282
14283     <div class="entry">
14284       <div class="title">
14285         <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>
14286       </div>
14287       <div class="date">
14288          6th April 2012
14289       </div>
14290       <div class="body">
14291         <p>Recently I have spent time with
14292 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
14293 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14294 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
14295 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
14296 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
14297 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
14298 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
14299 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
14300
14301 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
14302 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
14303 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
14304 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
14305 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
14306 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
14307 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
14308 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
14309
14310 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
14311 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
14312 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
14313 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
14314 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
14315 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
14316 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
14317 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
14318
14319 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
14320 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
14321 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
14322 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
14323 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
14324 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
14325 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
14326 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
14327 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
14328 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
14329
14330 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
14331 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
14332 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
14333 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
14334
14335 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
14336 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
14337
14338 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
14339 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
14340 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
14341 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
14342
14343       </div>
14344       <div class="tags">
14345
14346
14347         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>.
14348
14349
14350       </div>
14351     </div>
14352     <div class="padding"></div>
14353
14354     <div class="entry">
14355       <div class="title">
14356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
14357       </div>
14358       <div class="date">
14359          5th April 2012
14360       </div>
14361       <div class="body">
14362         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
14363 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
14364 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
14365 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
14366 for schools.  Check out his article
14367 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
14368 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
14369
14370       </div>
14371       <div class="tags">
14372
14373
14374         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>.
14375
14376
14377       </div>
14378     </div>
14379     <div class="padding"></div>
14380
14381     <div class="entry">
14382       <div class="title">
14383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
14384       </div>
14385       <div class="date">
14386          1st April 2012
14387       </div>
14388       <div class="body">
14389         <p>Germany is a core area for the
14390 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14391 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
14392 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
14393
14394 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14395
14396 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
14397 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
14398 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
14399 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
14400 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
14401 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
14402 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
14403 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
14404
14405 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
14406 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
14407 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
14408 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
14409 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
14410 the end of April this year.</p>
14411
14412 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14413 project?</strong></p>
14414
14415 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
14416 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
14417 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
14418 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
14419 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
14420 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
14421 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
14422 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
14423 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
14424 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
14425 Skolelinux.</p>
14426
14427 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
14428 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
14429 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
14430 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
14431 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
14432 the admin teachers.</p>
14433
14434 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14435 Edu?</strong></p>
14436
14437 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
14438 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
14439 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
14440
14441 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
14442 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
14443 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
14444 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
14445 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
14446
14447 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14448 Edu?</strong></p>
14449
14450 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
14451
14452 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14453
14454 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
14455 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
14456 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
14457 LibreOffice.</p>
14458
14459 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14460 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14461
14462 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
14463 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
14464 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
14465
14466       </div>
14467       <div class="tags">
14468
14469
14470         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>.
14471
14472
14473       </div>
14474     </div>
14475     <div class="padding"></div>
14476
14477     <div class="entry">
14478       <div class="title">
14479         <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>
14480       </div>
14481       <div class="date">
14482         25th March 2012
14483       </div>
14484       <div class="body">
14485         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14486
14487 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
14488 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
14489 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
14490 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
14491 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
14492 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
14493 and download as a
14494 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
14495 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14496
14497 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14498   <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"' />
14499     <p>Download video as
14500       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14501 </video></p>
14502
14503       </div>
14504       <div class="tags">
14505
14506
14507         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>.
14508
14509
14510       </div>
14511     </div>
14512     <div class="padding"></div>
14513
14514     <div class="entry">
14515       <div class="title">
14516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
14517       </div>
14518       <div class="date">
14519         19th March 2012
14520       </div>
14521       <div class="body">
14522         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14523 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
14524 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
14525 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
14526 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
14527
14528 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14529
14530 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
14531 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
14532 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
14533 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
14534 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
14535 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
14536 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
14537 installations.</p>
14538
14539 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14540 project?</strong></p>
14541
14542 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
14543 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
14544 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
14545 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
14546 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
14547 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
14548 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
14549 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
14550 these things we decided to try it.</p>
14551
14552 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14553 Edu?</strong></p>
14554
14555 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
14556 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
14557 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
14558 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
14559 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
14560 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
14561 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
14562 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
14563
14564 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14565 Edu?</strong></p>
14566
14567 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
14568 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
14569 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
14570 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
14571 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
14572
14573 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14574
14575 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
14576 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
14577 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
14578 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
14579 that counts...)</p>
14580
14581 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14582 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14583
14584 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
14585 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
14586 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14587 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14588 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14589 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14590 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14591 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14592 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14593 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14594 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14595
14596 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
14597 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
14598 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
14599
14600       </div>
14601       <div class="tags">
14602
14603
14604         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>.
14605
14606
14607       </div>
14608     </div>
14609     <div class="padding"></div>
14610
14611     <div class="entry">
14612       <div class="title">
14613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
14614       </div>
14615       <div class="date">
14616         16th March 2012
14617       </div>
14618       <div class="body">
14619         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
14620 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
14621 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
14622 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
14623
14624 <ol>
14625
14626 <li>The documentation is written in a
14627 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
14628 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
14629 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
14630 docbook XML.</li>
14631
14632 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
14633 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
14634 with the translated text.</li>
14635
14636 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
14637 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
14638 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
14639 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
14640 images.</li>
14641
14642 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
14643 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
14644
14645 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
14646 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
14647
14648 </ol>
14649
14650 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
14651 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
14652 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
14653 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
14654 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
14655
14656 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
14657 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
14658 package</a>.</p>
14659
14660       </div>
14661       <div class="tags">
14662
14663
14664         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>.
14665
14666
14667       </div>
14668     </div>
14669     <div class="padding"></div>
14670
14671     <div class="entry">
14672       <div class="title">
14673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
14674       </div>
14675       <div class="date">
14676         11th March 2012
14677       </div>
14678       <div class="body">
14679         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
14680 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
14681 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14682 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
14683 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
14684 you have not done so already.</p>
14685
14686 <p>I plan to present the new version at
14687 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
14688 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
14689 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
14690
14691       </div>
14692       <div class="tags">
14693
14694
14695         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>.
14696
14697
14698       </div>
14699     </div>
14700     <div class="padding"></div>
14701
14702     <div class="entry">
14703       <div class="title">
14704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
14705       </div>
14706       <div class="date">
14707          9th March 2012
14708       </div>
14709       <div class="body">
14710         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
14711 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
14712 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14713 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
14714 more international audience.</p>
14715
14716 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14717 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
14718 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
14719 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
14720 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
14721 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
14722 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
14723
14724
14725 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14726
14727 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
14728 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
14729 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
14730 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
14731 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
14732 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
14733 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
14734 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
14735 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
14736 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
14737 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
14738
14739 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14740 project?</strong></p>
14741
14742 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
14743 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
14744 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
14745 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
14746 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
14747 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
14748 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
14749 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
14750 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
14751 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
14752 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
14753 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
14754 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
14755
14756 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14757 Edu?</strong></p>
14758
14759 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
14760 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
14761 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
14762 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
14763 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
14764 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
14765 Japan.</p>
14766
14767 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14768 Edu?</strong></p>
14769
14770 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
14771 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
14772 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
14773 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
14774 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
14775 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
14776 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
14777 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
14778 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
14779 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
14780 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
14781 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
14782 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
14783 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
14784 help.</p>
14785
14786 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14787
14788 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
14789 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
14790 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
14791 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
14792 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
14793 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
14794 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
14795 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
14796 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
14797 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
14798 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
14799
14800 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14801 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14802
14803 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
14804 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
14805 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
14806 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
14807 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
14808 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
14809 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
14810 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
14811 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
14812 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
14813 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
14814 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
14815
14816       </div>
14817       <div class="tags">
14818
14819
14820         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>.
14821
14822
14823       </div>
14824     </div>
14825     <div class="padding"></div>
14826
14827     <div class="entry">
14828       <div class="title">
14829         <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>
14830       </div>
14831       <div class="date">
14832          7th March 2012
14833       </div>
14834       <div class="body">
14835         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14836
14837 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
14838 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
14839 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
14840 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
14841 download as a
14842 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
14843 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14844
14845 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14846   <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"' />
14847     <p>Download video as
14848       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14849 </video></p>
14850
14851       </div>
14852       <div class="tags">
14853
14854
14855         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>.
14856
14857
14858       </div>
14859     </div>
14860     <div class="padding"></div>
14861
14862     <div class="entry">
14863       <div class="title">
14864         <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>
14865       </div>
14866       <div class="date">
14867          4th March 2012
14868       </div>
14869       <div class="body">
14870         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
14871 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14872 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14873 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
14874 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
14875 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14876
14877       </div>
14878       <div class="tags">
14879
14880
14881         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>.
14882
14883
14884       </div>
14885     </div>
14886     <div class="padding"></div>
14887
14888     <div class="entry">
14889       <div class="title">
14890         <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>
14891       </div>
14892       <div class="date">
14893          3rd March 2012
14894       </div>
14895       <div class="body">
14896         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
14897 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
14898 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
14899 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
14900 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
14901 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
14902 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
14903 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
14904 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
14905 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
14906 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
14907 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
14908 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
14909 year...</p>
14910
14911 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
14912 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
14913 name,
14914 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
14915 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
14916 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
14917 mean). I've been following
14918 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
14919 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
14920 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
14921 Check it out. :)</p>
14922
14923       </div>
14924       <div class="tags">
14925
14926
14927         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>.
14928
14929
14930       </div>
14931     </div>
14932     <div class="padding"></div>
14933
14934     <div class="entry">
14935       <div class="title">
14936         <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>
14937       </div>
14938       <div class="date">
14939         27th February 2012
14940       </div>
14941       <div class="body">
14942         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
14943 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14944 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
14945 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
14946 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
14947 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
14948 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14949
14950       </div>
14951       <div class="tags">
14952
14953
14954         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>.
14955
14956
14957       </div>
14958     </div>
14959     <div class="padding"></div>
14960
14961     <div class="entry">
14962       <div class="title">
14963         <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>
14964       </div>
14965       <div class="date">
14966         19th February 2012
14967       </div>
14968       <div class="body">
14969         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
14970 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
14971 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14972 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14973 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
14974 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
14975 solution for your school.</p>
14976
14977       </div>
14978       <div class="tags">
14979
14980
14981         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>.
14982
14983
14984       </div>
14985     </div>
14986     <div class="padding"></div>
14987
14988     <div class="entry">
14989       <div class="title">
14990         <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>
14991       </div>
14992       <div class="date">
14993         14th February 2012
14994       </div>
14995       <div class="body">
14996         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
14997 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
14998 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
14999 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15000 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15001 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15002 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15003 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15004 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15005
15006 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15007 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15008 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15009 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15010 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15011
15012 <blockquote><pre>
15013 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15014 do
15015     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15016     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15017 done
15018 </blockquote></pre>
15019
15020 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15021 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15022
15023 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15024
15025 <blockquote><pre>
15026 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15027 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15028 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15029 </blockquote></pre>
15030
15031 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15032 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15033 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15034 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15035 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15036 mounted inside my box.</p>
15037
15038 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15039 Software RAID in the
15040 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15041 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15042 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15043 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15044 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15045 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15046
15047       </div>
15048       <div class="tags">
15049
15050
15051         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>.
15052
15053
15054       </div>
15055     </div>
15056     <div class="padding"></div>
15057
15058     <div class="entry">
15059       <div class="title">
15060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15061       </div>
15062       <div class="date">
15063         13th February 2012
15064       </div>
15065       <div class="body">
15066         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15067 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15068 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15069 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15070 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15071 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15072 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15073 change the global proxy setting by editing
15074 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15075 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15076
15077 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15078 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15079 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15080
15081 <blockquote><pre>
15082 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15083 {
15084    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15085        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15086        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15087       return "DIRECT";
15088    else
15089       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15090 }
15091 </pre></blockquote>
15092
15093 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15094
15095 <blockquote><pre>
15096 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15097 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15098 </pre></blockquote>
15099
15100 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15101 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15102 would be used for
15103 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15104 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15105 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15106 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15107 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15108 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15109 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15110 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15111 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15112 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15113
15114 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15115 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15116 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15117 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15118 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15119 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15120
15121 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15122 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15123 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15124 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15125 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15126 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15127 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15128 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15129 the network setup changes.</p>
15130
15131 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15132 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15133 draft</a> and a
15134 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15135 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15136
15137       </div>
15138       <div class="tags">
15139
15140
15141         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>.
15142
15143
15144       </div>
15145     </div>
15146     <div class="padding"></div>
15147
15148     <div class="entry">
15149       <div class="title">
15150         <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>
15151       </div>
15152       <div class="date">
15153          5th February 2012
15154       </div>
15155       <div class="body">
15156         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15157 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15158 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15159 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15160 in the morning.  This is done using the
15161 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15162
15163 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15164 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15165 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15166 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15167 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15168 the
15169 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15170 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15171 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15172 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15173 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15174
15175 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15176 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15177 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15178 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15179 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15180 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15181 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15182
15183 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15184 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15185 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15186 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15187 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15188
15189       </div>
15190       <div class="tags">
15191
15192
15193         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>.
15194
15195
15196       </div>
15197     </div>
15198     <div class="padding"></div>
15199
15200     <div class="entry">
15201       <div class="title">
15202         <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>
15203       </div>
15204       <div class="date">
15205          4th February 2012
15206       </div>
15207       <div class="body">
15208         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15209 publish the third beta version of
15210 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15211 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15212 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15213 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15214 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15215 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15216 on the project announcement list.</p>
15217
15218 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15219 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15220
15221 <ul>
15222
15223 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15224   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15225   the installation.</li>
15226
15227 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15228   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15229
15230 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15231   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15232   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15233
15234 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15235   for the local system administrator is created during installation
15236   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
15237   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
15238   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
15239   up to date on the system.</li>
15240
15241 </ul>
15242
15243 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
15244 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
15245 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
15246 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
15247
15248 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
15249 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
15250 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
15251 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
15252 will see you there?</p>
15253
15254       </div>
15255       <div class="tags">
15256
15257
15258         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>.
15259
15260
15261       </div>
15262     </div>
15263     <div class="padding"></div>
15264
15265     <div class="entry">
15266       <div class="title">
15267         <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>
15268       </div>
15269       <div class="date">
15270         27th January 2012
15271       </div>
15272       <div class="body">
15273         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
15274 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
15275 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15276 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
15277 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
15278 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
15279 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
15280
15281 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
15282 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
15283 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
15284 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
15285 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
15286 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
15287 not taken care of by this.</p>
15288
15289 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
15290 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
15291 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
15292 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
15293 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
15294 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
15295 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
15296 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
15297 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
15298 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
15299 firmware packages.</p>
15300
15301 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
15302 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
15303 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
15304 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
15305 initrd with extra firmware, the
15306 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
15307 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
15308 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
15309
15310 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
15311 network cards working.  For this,
15312 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
15313 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
15314 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
15315
15316 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
15317 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
15318 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
15319
15320 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
15321 try.</p>
15322
15323       </div>
15324       <div class="tags">
15325
15326
15327         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>.
15328
15329
15330       </div>
15331     </div>
15332     <div class="padding"></div>
15333
15334     <div class="entry">
15335       <div class="title">
15336         <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>
15337       </div>
15338       <div class="date">
15339         25th January 2012
15340       </div>
15341       <div class="body">
15342         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
15343 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
15344 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
15345 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
15346 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
15347
15348 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
15349 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
15350 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
15351 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
15352 this is done, log on to the central server and run
15353 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
15354 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
15355 will look similar to this:</p>
15356
15357 <p><blockquote><pre>
15358 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
15359 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
15360 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.
15361
15362 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
15363
15364 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15365 enter password: *******
15366 %
15367 </pre></blockquote></p>
15368
15369 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
15370 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
15371 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
15372 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
15373 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
15374 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
15375 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
15376 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
15377 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
15378 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
15379 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
15380 automatically.</p>
15381
15382 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
15383 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
15384
15385 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
15386 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
15387 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
15388
15389       </div>
15390       <div class="tags">
15391
15392
15393         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>.
15394
15395
15396       </div>
15397     </div>
15398     <div class="padding"></div>
15399
15400     <div class="entry">
15401       <div class="title">
15402         <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>
15403       </div>
15404       <div class="date">
15405         10th January 2012
15406       </div>
15407       <div class="body">
15408         <p>In the Squeeze version of
15409 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
15410 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
15411 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
15412 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
15413 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
15414 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
15415 first time.</p>
15416
15417 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
15418 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
15419 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
15420 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
15421
15422 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
15423 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
15424 new setting.</p>
15425
15426 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
15427 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
15428 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
15429
15430       </div>
15431       <div class="tags">
15432
15433
15434         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>.
15435
15436
15437       </div>
15438     </div>
15439     <div class="padding"></div>
15440
15441     <div class="entry">
15442       <div class="title">
15443         <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>
15444       </div>
15445       <div class="date">
15446          7th January 2012
15447       </div>
15448       <div class="body">
15449         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
15450 the second beta version of
15451 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
15452 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
15453 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
15454 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
15455 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15456 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
15457 on the project announcement list.</p>
15458
15459       </div>
15460       <div class="tags">
15461
15462
15463         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>.
15464
15465
15466       </div>
15467     </div>
15468     <div class="padding"></div>
15469
15470     <div class="entry">
15471       <div class="title">
15472         <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>
15473       </div>
15474       <div class="date">
15475          3rd January 2012
15476       </div>
15477       <div class="body">
15478         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
15479 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
15480 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
15481 interesting.</p>
15482
15483 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
15484 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
15485 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
15486 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
15487 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
15488 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
15489 wrap up its tasks.</p>
15490
15491 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
15492 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
15493 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
15494 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
15495 because I was typing.</P>
15496
15497 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
15498 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
15499 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
15500 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
15501 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
15502 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
15503 generate entropy.</p>
15504
15505 <p>The fix is in
15506 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
15507 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
15508 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
15509 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
15510
15511       </div>
15512       <div class="tags">
15513
15514
15515         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>.
15516
15517
15518       </div>
15519     </div>
15520     <div class="padding"></div>
15521
15522     <div class="entry">
15523       <div class="title">
15524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
15525       </div>
15526       <div class="date">
15527         21st November 2011
15528       </div>
15529       <div class="body">
15530         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
15531 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
15532 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
15533 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
15534 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
15535 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
15536 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
15537 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
15538 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
15539 the tools to do so.</p>
15540
15541 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
15542 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
15543 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
15544 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
15545
15546 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
15547 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
15548 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
15549 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
15550 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
15551 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
15552 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
15553 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
15554
15555 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
15556 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
15557 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
15558
15559 <p><pre>
15560 #!/usr/bin/perl
15561 use strict;
15562 use warnings;
15563 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
15564 BEGIN {
15565     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
15566     my %rhelmodules = (
15567         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
15568         );
15569     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
15570         eval "use $module;";
15571         if ($@) {
15572             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
15573             system("yum install -y $pkg");
15574             eval "use $module;";
15575         }
15576     }
15577 }
15578 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
15579
15580 upgrade_dell();
15581
15582 exit 0;
15583
15584 sub run_firmware_script {
15585     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
15586     unless ($script) {
15587         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15588         exit 1
15589     }
15590     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15591
15592     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15593         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15594     } else {
15595         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15596     }
15597 }
15598
15599 sub run_firmware_scripts {
15600     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
15601     # Run firmware packages
15602     for my $dir (@dirs) {
15603         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
15604         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
15605         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
15606             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
15607             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
15608         }
15609         closedir $dh;
15610     }
15611 }
15612
15613 sub download {
15614     my $url = shift;
15615     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
15616     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
15617 }
15618
15619 sub upgrade_dell {
15620     my @dirs;
15621     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15622     chomp $product;
15623
15624     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
15625
15626         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
15627         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
15628
15629         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
15630             CLEANUP => 1
15631             );
15632         chdir($tmpdir);
15633         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
15634         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
15635         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
15636         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
15637         my $fwopts = "-q";
15638         if (@paths) {
15639             for my $url (@paths) {
15640                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
15641             }
15642             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
15643         } else {
15644             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15645             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15646         }
15647         chdir('/');
15648     } else {
15649         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15650         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15651     }
15652 }
15653
15654 sub fetch_dell_fw {
15655     my $path = shift;
15656     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
15657     download($url);
15658 }
15659
15660 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
15661 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
15662 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
15663 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
15664     my $filename = shift;
15665
15666     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15667     chomp $product;
15668     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
15669
15670     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
15671
15672     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
15673     my @paths;
15674     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
15675         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
15676         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
15677         my $oscode;
15678         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
15679             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
15680         } else {
15681             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
15682         }
15683         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
15684         {
15685             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
15686         }
15687     }
15688     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
15689         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
15690
15691         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
15692         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
15693
15694         my $cpath = $component->{path};
15695         for my $path (@paths) {
15696             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
15697                 push(@paths, $cpath);
15698             }
15699         }
15700     }
15701     return @paths;
15702 }
15703 </pre>
15704
15705 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
15706 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
15707 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
15708 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
15709 outdated.</p>
15710
15711       </div>
15712       <div class="tags">
15713
15714
15715         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>.
15716
15717
15718       </div>
15719     </div>
15720     <div class="padding"></div>
15721
15722     <div class="entry">
15723       <div class="title">
15724         <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>
15725       </div>
15726       <div class="date">
15727          7th October 2011
15728       </div>
15729       <div class="body">
15730         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
15731 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
15732 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
15733 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
15734 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
15735 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
15736 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
15737 models.</p>
15738
15739 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
15740 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
15741 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
15742 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
15743
15744 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
15745 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
15746 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
15747 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
15748 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
15749 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
15750 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
15751 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
15752 distributed.</p>
15753
15754 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
15755
15756 <ul>
15757
15758 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
15759   other relevant equipment.</li>
15760
15761 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
15762
15763 </ul>
15764
15765 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
15766 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
15767 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
15768 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
15769 books available.</p>
15770
15771 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
15772 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
15773 libraries. :)</p>
15774
15775       </div>
15776       <div class="tags">
15777
15778
15779         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>.
15780
15781
15782       </div>
15783     </div>
15784     <div class="padding"></div>
15785
15786     <div class="entry">
15787       <div class="title">
15788         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
15789       </div>
15790       <div class="date">
15791         17th September 2011
15792       </div>
15793       <div class="body">
15794         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
15795 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
15796 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
15797 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
15798 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
15799 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
15800 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
15801 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
15802
15803 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
15804
15805 <blockquote><pre>
15806 #!/bin/sh
15807 # apt-get install lsdvd
15808 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
15809 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
15810 </pre></blockquote>
15811
15812 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
15813 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
15814 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
15815 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
15816
15817 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
15818 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
15819 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
15820 back as an ISO.
15821
15822 <blockquote><pre>
15823 #!/bin/sh
15824 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
15825 set -e
15826 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
15827 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
15828 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
15829 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
15830 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
15831 </pre></blockquote>
15832
15833 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
15834
15835 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
15836 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
15837 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
15838 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
15839 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
15840
15841 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
15842 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
15843 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
15844 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
15845 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
15846 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
15847
15848       </div>
15849       <div class="tags">
15850
15851
15852         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>.
15853
15854
15855       </div>
15856     </div>
15857     <div class="padding"></div>
15858
15859     <div class="entry">
15860       <div class="title">
15861         <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>
15862       </div>
15863       <div class="date">
15864          4th August 2011
15865       </div>
15866       <div class="body">
15867         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
15868 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
15869 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
15870 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
15871 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
15872 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
15873 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
15874 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
15875 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
15876
15877 <p><blockquote>
15878 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
15879 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
15880 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
15881 </blockquote></p>
15882
15883 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
15884 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
15885 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
15886 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
15887 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
15888 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
15889 hard to explain.</p>
15890
15891 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
15892 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
15893 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
15894 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
15895 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
15896 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
15897 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
15898 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
15899 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
15900 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
15901 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
15902 mode).</p>
15903
15904 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
15905 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
15906 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
15907 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
15908 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
15909 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
15910 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
15911 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
15912 after visiting single user mode.</p>
15913
15914 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
15915 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
15916 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
15917 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
15918 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
15919 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
15920 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
15921 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
15922
15923 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
15924 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
15925 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
15926
15927       </div>
15928       <div class="tags">
15929
15930
15931         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>.
15932
15933
15934       </div>
15935     </div>
15936     <div class="padding"></div>
15937
15938     <div class="entry">
15939       <div class="title">
15940         <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>
15941       </div>
15942       <div class="date">
15943         30th July 2011
15944       </div>
15945       <div class="body">
15946         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
15947 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
15948 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
15949 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
15950 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
15951 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
15952 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
15953 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
15954 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
15955 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
15956 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
15957 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
15958 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
15959
15960 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
15961 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
15962 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
15963 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
15964 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
15965 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
15966 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
15967 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
15968 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
15969
15970 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
15971 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
15972 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
15973 is presented.</p>
15974
15975 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
15976 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
15977 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
15978 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
15979 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
15980 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
15981 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
15982 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
15983 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
15984 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
15985 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
15986 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
15987 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
15988 find time to push this forward.</p>
15989
15990       </div>
15991       <div class="tags">
15992
15993
15994         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>.
15995
15996
15997       </div>
15998     </div>
15999     <div class="padding"></div>
16000
16001     <div class="entry">
16002       <div class="title">
16003         <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>
16004       </div>
16005       <div class="date">
16006         29th July 2011
16007       </div>
16008       <div class="body">
16009         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16010 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16011 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16012 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16013 issues.</p>
16014
16015 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16016 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16017 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16018
16019 <ol>
16020
16021 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16022 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16023 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16024 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16025 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16026 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16027 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16028 Debian.</li>
16029
16030 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16031 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16032 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16033 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16034 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16035 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16036 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16037 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16038 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16039 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16040 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16041 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16042 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16043
16044 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16045 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16046 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16047 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16048 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16049 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16050 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16051 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16052 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16053 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16054
16055 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16056 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16057 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16058 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16059 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16060 latter behaviour.</li>
16061
16062 </ol>
16063
16064 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16065 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16066 it do not matter much.</p>
16067
16068 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16069 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16070 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16071
16072       </div>
16073       <div class="tags">
16074
16075
16076         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16077
16078
16079       </div>
16080     </div>
16081     <div class="padding"></div>
16082
16083     <div class="entry">
16084       <div class="title">
16085         <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>
16086       </div>
16087       <div class="date">
16088         26th July 2011
16089       </div>
16090       <div class="body">
16091         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16092 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16093 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16094 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16095 security support for a few years.</p>
16096
16097 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16098 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16099 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16100 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16101 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16102 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16103 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16104 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16105 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16106 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16107 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16108 easier in the future.</p>
16109
16110 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16111 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16112 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16113 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16114 do not have time for.</p>
16115
16116       </div>
16117       <div class="tags">
16118
16119
16120         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>.
16121
16122
16123       </div>
16124     </div>
16125     <div class="padding"></div>
16126
16127     <div class="entry">
16128       <div class="title">
16129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16130       </div>
16131       <div class="date">
16132         20th June 2011
16133       </div>
16134       <div class="body">
16135         <p>Reading
16136 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16137 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16138 parts of the
16139 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16140 and
16141 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16142 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16143 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16144 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16145
16146       </div>
16147       <div class="tags">
16148
16149
16150         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>.
16151
16152
16153       </div>
16154     </div>
16155     <div class="padding"></div>
16156
16157     <div class="entry">
16158       <div class="title">
16159         <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>
16160       </div>
16161       <div class="date">
16162         30th April 2011
16163       </div>
16164       <div class="body">
16165         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16166 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16167 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16168 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16169 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16170 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16171 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16172 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16173 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16174 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16175
16176 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16177 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16178 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16179 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16180 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16181
16182       </div>
16183       <div class="tags">
16184
16185
16186         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>.
16187
16188
16189       </div>
16190     </div>
16191     <div class="padding"></div>
16192
16193     <div class="entry">
16194       <div class="title">
16195         <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>
16196       </div>
16197       <div class="date">
16198         29th April 2011
16199       </div>
16200       <div class="body">
16201         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16202 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16203 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16204 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16205 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16206 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16207 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16208 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16209 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16210 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16211 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16212 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16213 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16214
16215 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16216 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16217 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16218 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16219 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16220 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16221 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16222 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16223 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16224 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16225 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16226 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16227 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16228
16229 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16230 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16231 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16232 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16233 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16234 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16235 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
16236 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
16237 it.</p>
16238
16239 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
16240 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
16241 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
16242 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
16243 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
16244 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
16245 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
16246
16247 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
16248 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
16249 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
16250 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
16251 and range= options.</p>
16252
16253 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
16254 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
16255 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
16256 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
16257 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
16258 to best handle this.  I've noticed
16259 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
16260 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
16261 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
16262 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
16263
16264 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
16265 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
16266 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
16267 discussions instead of only
16268 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
16269 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
16270 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
16271 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
16272 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
16273 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
16274
16275       </div>
16276       <div class="tags">
16277
16278
16279         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>.
16280
16281
16282       </div>
16283     </div>
16284     <div class="padding"></div>
16285
16286     <div class="entry">
16287       <div class="title">
16288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
16289       </div>
16290       <div class="date">
16291          6th April 2011
16292       </div>
16293       <div class="body">
16294         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
16295 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
16296 A few days ago the project
16297 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
16298 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
16299 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
16300 into Gnash.</p>
16301
16302       </div>
16303       <div class="tags">
16304
16305
16306         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>.
16307
16308
16309       </div>
16310     </div>
16311     <div class="padding"></div>
16312
16313     <div class="entry">
16314       <div class="title">
16315         <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>
16316       </div>
16317       <div class="date">
16318          3rd April 2011
16319       </div>
16320       <div class="body">
16321         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
16322 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
16323 update in English.</p>
16324
16325 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
16326 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
16327 of the British service
16328 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
16329 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
16330 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
16331 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
16332 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
16333 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
16334 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
16335 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
16336 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
16337 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
16338 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
16339 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
16340 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
16341
16342 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
16343 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
16344 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
16345 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
16346 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
16347 public infrastructure.</p>
16348
16349 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
16350 such service?</p>
16351
16352       </div>
16353       <div class="tags">
16354
16355
16356         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>.
16357
16358
16359       </div>
16360     </div>
16361     <div class="padding"></div>
16362
16363     <div class="entry">
16364       <div class="title">
16365         <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>
16366       </div>
16367       <div class="date">
16368         28th January 2011
16369       </div>
16370       <div class="body">
16371         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
16372 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
16373 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
16374 available on the Internet, and check our locally
16375 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
16376 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
16377 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
16378 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
16379 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
16380 out which security holes were present in our free software
16381 collection.</p>
16382
16383 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
16384 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
16385 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
16386 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
16387 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
16388 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
16389 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
16390 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
16391 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
16392 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
16393 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
16394 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
16395 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
16396 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
16397 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
16398 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
16399
16400 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
16401 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
16402 check out, one could look up
16403 <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
16404 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
16405 The most recent one is
16406 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
16407 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
16408 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
16409
16410 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
16411 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
16412 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
16413 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
16414 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
16415 security issues out.</p>
16416
16417 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
16418 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
16419 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
16420 RHEL is providing
16421 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
16422 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
16423 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
16424
16425 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
16426 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
16427 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
16428 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
16429 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
16430 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
16431 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
16432 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
16433 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
16434 established soon.</p>
16435
16436 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
16437 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
16438 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
16439 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
16440 for their packages.</p>
16441
16442       </div>
16443       <div class="tags">
16444
16445
16446         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>.
16447
16448
16449       </div>
16450     </div>
16451     <div class="padding"></div>
16452
16453     <div class="entry">
16454       <div class="title">
16455         <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>
16456       </div>
16457       <div class="date">
16458         23rd January 2011
16459       </div>
16460       <div class="body">
16461         <p>In the
16462 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
16463 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
16464 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
16465 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
16466 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
16467 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
16468 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
16469 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
16470 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
16471 one of my machines like this:</p>
16472
16473 <pre>
16474 loaded modules:
16475 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
16476 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
16477 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
16478 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
16479 10de:03ec pata_amd
16480 10de:03f6 sata_nv
16481 1022:1103 k8temp
16482 109e:036e bttv
16483 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
16484 11ab:4364 sky2
16485 </pre>
16486
16487 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
16488 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
16489
16490 <pre>
16491 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
16492     echo loaded pci modules:
16493     (
16494         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
16495         for address in * ; do
16496             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16497                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16498                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16499                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16500                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
16501                     echo "$id $module"
16502                 fi
16503             fi
16504         done
16505     )
16506     echo
16507 fi
16508 </pre>
16509
16510 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
16511 mappings:</p>
16512
16513 <pre>
16514 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
16515     echo loaded usb modules:
16516     (
16517         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
16518         for address in * ; do
16519             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16520                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16521                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16522                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16523                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
16524                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
16525                         echo "$id $module"
16526                     fi
16527                 fi
16528             fi
16529         done
16530     )
16531     echo
16532 fi
16533 </pre>
16534
16535 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
16536 well.</p>
16537
16538       </div>
16539       <div class="tags">
16540
16541
16542         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>.
16543
16544
16545       </div>
16546     </div>
16547     <div class="padding"></div>
16548
16549     <div class="entry">
16550       <div class="title">
16551         <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>
16552       </div>
16553       <div class="date">
16554         16th January 2011
16555       </div>
16556       <div class="body">
16557         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
16558 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
16559 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
16560 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
16561 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
16562 the Wikipedia article on
16563 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
16564 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
16565 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
16566 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
16567 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
16568 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
16569 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
16570 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
16571 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
16572 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
16573 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
16574 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
16575
16576 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
16577 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
16578 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
16579 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
16580 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
16581 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
16582 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
16583 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
16584 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
16585 from last week</a>.</p>
16586
16587 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16588 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16589 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16590 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16591 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16592 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16593 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16594
16595 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16596 available from
16597 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
16598 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
16599 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
16600
16601 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
16602 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
16603 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
16604 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
16605
16606       </div>
16607       <div class="tags">
16608
16609
16610         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
16611
16612
16613       </div>
16614     </div>
16615     <div class="padding"></div>
16616
16617     <div class="entry">
16618       <div class="title">
16619         <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>
16620       </div>
16621       <div class="date">
16622         12th January 2011
16623       </div>
16624       <div class="body">
16625         <p>Today I discovered
16626 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
16627 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
16628 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
16629 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
16630 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
16631 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
16632 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
16633 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16634 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
16635 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
16636 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
16637 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
16638 on the Google announcement is available from
16639 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
16640 A good read. :)</p>
16641
16642 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
16643 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
16644 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
16645 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
16646 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
16647 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
16648 browsers support H.264, and others support
16649 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
16650 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
16651 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
16652 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
16653 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
16654 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
16655 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
16656 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
16657
16658 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
16659 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
16660 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
16661 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
16662 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
16663 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
16664 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
16665
16666 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
16667 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
16668 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
16669 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
16670 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
16671 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
16672 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
16673
16674 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
16675 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
16676 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
16677 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
16678 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
16679 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
16680 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
16681
16682 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
16683 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
16684 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
16685 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
16686 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
16687 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
16688 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
16689 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
16690 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
16691 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
16692 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
16693 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
16694 I guess time will tell.</p>
16695
16696 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
16697 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
16698 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
16699
16700       </div>
16701       <div class="tags">
16702
16703
16704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16705
16706
16707       </div>
16708     </div>
16709     <div class="padding"></div>
16710
16711     <div class="entry">
16712       <div class="title">
16713         <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>
16714       </div>
16715       <div class="date">
16716         30th December 2010
16717       </div>
16718       <div class="body">
16719         <p>After trying to
16720 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
16721 Ogg Theora</a> to
16722 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
16723 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
16724 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
16725 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
16726 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
16727 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
16728 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
16729
16730 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
16731 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
16732 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
16733 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
16734 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
16735 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
16736 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
16737
16738 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
16739 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
16740
16741       </div>
16742       <div class="tags">
16743
16744
16745         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>.
16746
16747
16748       </div>
16749     </div>
16750     <div class="padding"></div>
16751
16752     <div class="entry">
16753       <div class="title">
16754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
16755       </div>
16756       <div class="date">
16757         27th December 2010
16758       </div>
16759       <div class="body">
16760         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
16761 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
16762 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
16763 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
16764 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
16765 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
16766 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
16767 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
16768
16769 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
16770 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
16771 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
16772 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
16773 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
16774 page</a>.</p>
16775
16776 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
16777 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
16778 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
16779 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
16780 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
16781 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
16782 specification on equal terms.</p>
16783
16784 <blockquote>
16785
16786 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
16787 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
16788 open standard:</p>
16789
16790 <ul>
16791
16792 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16793 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
16794 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
16795 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
16796
16797 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
16798 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
16799 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
16800 nominal fee.</li>
16801
16802 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
16803 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
16804 free basis.</li>
16805
16806 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
16807
16808 </ul>
16809 </blockquote>
16810
16811 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
16812 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
16813 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
16814 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
16815 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
16816 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
16817 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
16818
16819 <blockquote>
16820
16821 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
16822
16823 <ol>
16824
16825 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
16826 tilgængelig.</li>
16827
16828 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
16829 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
16830
16831 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
16832 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
16833
16834 </ol>
16835
16836 </blockquote>
16837
16838 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
16839 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
16840
16841 <blockquote>
16842
16843 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
16844
16845 <ol>
16846
16847 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
16848 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
16849
16850 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
16851 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
16852 Standard themselves;</li>
16853
16854 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
16855 any party or in any business model;</li>
16856
16857 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
16858 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
16859 parties;</li>
16860
16861 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
16862 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
16863 parties.</li>
16864
16865 </ol>
16866
16867 </blockquote>
16868
16869 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
16870 its
16871 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
16872 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
16873
16874 <blockquote>
16875 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
16876
16877 <ul>
16878
16879 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
16880   democratic:
16881
16882          <ul>
16883
16884          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
16885             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
16886             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
16887             and managed.</li>
16888
16889          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
16890             method, can be changed through input from all
16891             participants.</li>
16892
16893          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
16894             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
16895
16896          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
16897             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
16898
16899          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
16900             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
16901             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
16902
16903          </ul>
16904
16905 </li>
16906
16907 </ul>
16908
16909 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
16910 <ul>
16911
16912 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
16913   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
16914   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
16915   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
16916   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
16917
16918 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
16919   a technical or economic barriers</li>
16920
16921 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
16922   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
16923   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
16924   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
16925   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
16926   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
16927   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
16928   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
16929   intended to function.</li>
16930
16931 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
16932   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
16933   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
16934
16935 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
16936   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
16937   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
16938   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
16939   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
16940   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
16941   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
16942   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
16943
16944       <ul>
16945
16946       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
16947         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
16948         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
16949
16950       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
16951         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
16952         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
16953         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
16954
16955       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
16956         licensor</li>
16957
16958       </ul>
16959 </li>
16960
16961 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
16962   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
16963   or restricted licensing terms</li>
16964
16965 </ul>
16966
16967 </blockquote>
16968
16969 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
16970 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
16971 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
16972 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
16973 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
16974 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
16975 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
16976 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
16977 Standards.</p>
16978
16979       </div>
16980       <div class="tags">
16981
16982
16983         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>.
16984
16985
16986       </div>
16987     </div>
16988     <div class="padding"></div>
16989
16990     <div class="entry">
16991       <div class="title">
16992         <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>
16993       </div>
16994       <div class="date">
16995         25th December 2010
16996       </div>
16997       <div class="body">
16998         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
16999 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17000
17001 <blockquote>
17002
17003 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17004 as follows:</p>
17005
17006 <ol>
17007
17008 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17009 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17010 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17011
17012 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17013 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17014 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17015 parties.</li>
17016
17017 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17018 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17019 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17020
17021 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17022 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17023
17024 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17025
17026 </ol>
17027
17028 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17029 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17030 products based on the standard.</p>
17031 </blockquote>
17032
17033 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17034 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17035 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17036 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17037 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17038 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17039 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17040 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17041
17042 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17043
17044 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17045 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17046 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17047 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17048 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17049 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17050 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17051 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17052 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17053 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17054 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17055 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17056 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17057 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17058
17059 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17060
17061 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17062 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17063 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17064 documentation indicating this.</p>
17065
17066 <p>According to
17067 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17068 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17069 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17070 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17071 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17072 report is correct.</p>
17073
17074 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17075
17076 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17077 container format</a> and both the
17078 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17079 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17080 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17081
17082 <blockquote>
17083
17084 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17085 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17086 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17087 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17088 specification compliance.
17089
17090 </blockquote>
17091
17092 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17093 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17094 this is the term:<p>
17095
17096 <blockquote>
17097
17098 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17099 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17100 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17101 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17102 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17103 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17104 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17105 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17106 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17107 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17108 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17109 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17110
17111 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17112 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17113 </blockquote>
17114
17115 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17116 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17117 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17118 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17119 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17120
17121 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17122
17123 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17124 Theora format.
17125 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17126 and
17127 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17128 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17129 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17130 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17131 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17132 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17133 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17134 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17135
17136 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17137
17138 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17139
17140 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17141
17142 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17143 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17144 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17145 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17146 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17147 this.</p>
17148
17149 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17150 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17151
17152       </div>
17153       <div class="tags">
17154
17155
17156         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/h264">h264</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>.
17157
17158
17159       </div>
17160     </div>
17161     <div class="padding"></div>
17162
17163     <div class="entry">
17164       <div class="title">
17165         <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>
17166       </div>
17167       <div class="date">
17168         25th December 2010
17169       </div>
17170       <div class="body">
17171         <p>A few days ago
17172 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17173 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17174 2.0 of
17175 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17176 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17177 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17178 Nothing very surprising there, given
17179 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17180 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17181 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17182 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17183 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17184 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17185 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17186 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17187 standard definition from its content.</p>
17188
17189 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17190 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17191 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17192 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17193 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17194 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17195 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17196 background information about that story is available in
17197 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17198 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17199
17200 <blockquote>
17201 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17202 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17203 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17204
17205 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17206
17207 <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>
17208
17209 <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>
17210
17211 <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>
17212
17213 <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>
17214
17215 <p>
17216 <ul>
17217 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17218 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17219 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17220 </ul>
17221 </p>
17222
17223 <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>
17224
17225 <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>
17226
17227 <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>
17228
17229 <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>
17230
17231 <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>
17232
17233
17234 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17235 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
17236 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
17237 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
17238 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
17239 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
17240
17241 </p>
17242
17243 <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>
17244
17245 <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>
17246
17247 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
17248
17249 <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>
17250
17251 <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>
17252
17253 <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>
17254
17255 <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>
17256
17257 <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>
17258
17259 <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>
17260
17261 <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>
17262
17263 <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>
17264
17265 <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>
17266
17267 <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>
17268
17269 <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>
17270
17271 <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>
17272
17273 <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>
17274
17275 <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>
17276
17277 <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>
17278
17279 <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>
17280
17281 <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>
17282
17283 <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>
17284
17285 <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>
17286
17287 <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>
17288
17289 <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>
17290
17291 <p>On security:</p>
17292
17293 <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>
17294
17295 <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>
17296
17297 <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>
17298
17299 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
17300
17301 <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>
17302
17303 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
17304
17305 <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>
17306
17307 <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>
17308
17309 <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>
17310
17311 <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>
17312
17313 <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>
17314
17315 <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>
17316
17317 <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>
17318
17319 <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>
17320
17321 <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>
17322
17323 <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>
17324
17325 <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>
17326
17327 <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>
17328
17329 <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>
17330
17331 <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>
17332
17333 <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>
17334
17335 <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>
17336
17337 <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>
17338
17339 <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>
17340
17341 <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>
17342
17343 <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>
17344
17345 <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>
17346
17347 <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>
17348
17349 <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>
17350
17351 <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>
17352
17353 <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>
17354
17355 <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>
17356
17357 <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>
17358
17359 <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>
17360
17361 <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>
17362
17363 <p>Cordially,<br>
17364 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
17365 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
17366 </blockquote>
17367
17368       </div>
17369       <div class="tags">
17370
17371
17372         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>.
17373
17374
17375       </div>
17376     </div>
17377     <div class="padding"></div>
17378
17379     <div class="entry">
17380       <div class="title">
17381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
17382       </div>
17383       <div class="date">
17384         25th December 2010
17385       </div>
17386       <div class="body">
17387         <p>Half a year ago I
17388 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
17389 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
17390 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
17391 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
17392
17393 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
17394 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
17395 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
17396 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
17397 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
17398 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
17399 got such a great test tool available.</p>
17400
17401       </div>
17402       <div class="tags">
17403
17404
17405         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>.
17406
17407
17408       </div>
17409     </div>
17410     <div class="padding"></div>
17411
17412     <div class="entry">
17413       <div class="title">
17414         <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>
17415       </div>
17416       <div class="date">
17417         22nd December 2010
17418       </div>
17419       <div class="body">
17420         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
17421 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
17422 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
17423 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
17424 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
17425 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
17426 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
17427 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
17428 university.</p>
17429
17430 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
17431 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
17432 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
17433 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
17434 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
17435 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
17436 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
17437 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
17438
17439 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
17440 I perform on a new model.</p>
17441
17442 <ul>
17443
17444 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
17445 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
17446 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
17447
17448 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
17449 installation, X.org is working.</li>
17450
17451 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
17452 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
17453 reported by the program.</li>
17454
17455 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
17456 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
17457 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
17458 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
17459 normally test this by playing
17460 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
17461 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
17462
17463 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
17464 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17465
17466 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
17467 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17468
17469 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
17470 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
17471
17472 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
17473 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
17474 few.</li>
17475
17476 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
17477 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
17478 notice this.</li>
17479
17480 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
17481 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
17482 resume.</li>
17483
17484 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
17485 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
17486 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
17487 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
17488 not.</li>
17489
17490 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
17491 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
17492 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
17493 existence.</li>
17494
17495 </ul>
17496
17497 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
17498 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
17499 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
17500 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
17501 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
17502 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
17503 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
17504 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
17505
17506       </div>
17507       <div class="tags">
17508
17509
17510         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>.
17511
17512
17513       </div>
17514     </div>
17515     <div class="padding"></div>
17516
17517     <div class="entry">
17518       <div class="title">
17519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
17520       </div>
17521       <div class="date">
17522         11th December 2010
17523       </div>
17524       <div class="body">
17525         <p>As I continue to explore
17526 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
17527 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
17528 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
17529
17530 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
17531 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
17532 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
17533 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
17534 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
17535 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
17536 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
17537 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
17538 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
17539 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
17540 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
17541 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
17542 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
17543 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
17544 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
17545 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
17546 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
17547 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
17548 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
17549 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
17550
17551 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
17552 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
17553 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
17554 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
17555 If the Skolelinux foundation
17556 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
17557 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
17558 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
17559 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
17560 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
17561 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
17562 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
17563 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
17564
17565 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
17566 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
17567 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
17568 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
17569 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
17570 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
17571 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
17572 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
17573 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
17574 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
17575 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
17576 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
17577 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
17578 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
17579 currencies.</p>
17580
17581 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
17582 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
17583 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
17584 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
17585 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
17586 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17587 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17588 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17589 BitCoins.  Check out
17590 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17591 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17592 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17593 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17594 yet.</p>
17595
17596 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
17597 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
17598 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
17599 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
17600 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
17601
17602       </div>
17603       <div class="tags">
17604
17605
17606         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>.
17607
17608
17609       </div>
17610     </div>
17611     <div class="padding"></div>
17612
17613     <div class="entry">
17614       <div class="title">
17615         <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>
17616       </div>
17617       <div class="date">
17618         10th December 2010
17619       </div>
17620       <div class="body">
17621         <p>With this weeks lawless
17622 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
17623 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
17624 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
17625 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
17626 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
17627 A blog post from
17628 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
17629 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
17630 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
17631 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
17632 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
17633 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
17634 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
17635
17636 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
17637 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
17638 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
17639 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
17640 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
17641 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
17642 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
17643 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
17644 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
17645 Debian</a> soon.</p>
17646
17647 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
17648 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
17649 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
17650 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
17651 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
17652 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
17653 you can even get
17654 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
17655 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
17656 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
17657 on the current exchange rates.</p>
17658
17659 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
17660 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
17661 donations to the address
17662 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
17663
17664       </div>
17665       <div class="tags">
17666
17667
17668         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>.
17669
17670
17671       </div>
17672     </div>
17673     <div class="padding"></div>
17674
17675     <div class="entry">
17676       <div class="title">
17677         <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>
17678       </div>
17679       <div class="date">
17680          9th December 2010
17681       </div>
17682       <div class="body">
17683         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
17684 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
17685 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
17686 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
17687 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
17688 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
17689 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
17690 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
17691 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
17692 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
17693 operational.</p>
17694
17695 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
17696 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
17697 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
17698 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
17699 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
17700 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
17701 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
17702
17703       </div>
17704       <div class="tags">
17705
17706
17707         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>.
17708
17709
17710       </div>
17711     </div>
17712     <div class="padding"></div>
17713
17714     <div class="entry">
17715       <div class="title">
17716         <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>
17717       </div>
17718       <div class="date">
17719         29th November 2010
17720       </div>
17721       <div class="body">
17722         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
17723 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
17724 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
17725 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
17726 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
17727 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
17728
17729 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
17730 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
17731 will hold its
17732 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
17733 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
17734 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
17735 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
17736 vote this year.</p>
17737
17738       </div>
17739       <div class="tags">
17740
17741
17742         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>.
17743
17744
17745       </div>
17746     </div>
17747     <div class="padding"></div>
17748
17749     <div class="entry">
17750       <div class="title">
17751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
17752       </div>
17753       <div class="date">
17754         27th November 2010
17755       </div>
17756       <div class="body">
17757         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
17758 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
17759 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
17760 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
17761 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
17762 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
17763 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
17764 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
17765
17766 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
17767 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17768 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
17769 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
17770 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
17771 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
17772 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
17773 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
17774 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
17775 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
17776 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
17777
17778 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
17779 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
17780 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
17781 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
17782 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
17783 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
17784 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
17785 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
17786 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
17787 what is going on.</p>
17788
17789       </div>
17790       <div class="tags">
17791
17792
17793         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>.
17794
17795
17796       </div>
17797     </div>
17798     <div class="padding"></div>
17799
17800     <div class="entry">
17801       <div class="title">
17802         <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>
17803       </div>
17804       <div class="date">
17805         22nd November 2010
17806       </div>
17807       <div class="body">
17808         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
17809 upgrade testing of the
17810 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
17811 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
17812 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
17813 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
17814
17815 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
17816
17817 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17818
17819 <blockquote><p>
17820   apache2.2-bin
17821   aptdaemon
17822   baobab
17823   binfmt-support
17824   browser-plugin-gnash
17825   cheese-common
17826   cli-common
17827   cups-pk-helper
17828   dmz-cursor-theme
17829   empathy
17830   empathy-common
17831   freedesktop-sound-theme
17832   freeglut3
17833   gconf-defaults-service
17834   gdm-themes
17835   gedit-plugins
17836   geoclue
17837   geoclue-hostip
17838   geoclue-localnet
17839   geoclue-manual
17840   geoclue-yahoo
17841   gnash
17842   gnash-common
17843   gnome
17844   gnome-backgrounds
17845   gnome-cards-data
17846   gnome-codec-install
17847   gnome-core
17848   gnome-desktop-environment
17849   gnome-disk-utility
17850   gnome-screenshot
17851   gnome-search-tool
17852   gnome-session-canberra
17853   gnome-system-log
17854   gnome-themes-extras
17855   gnome-themes-more
17856   gnome-user-share
17857   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
17858   gstreamer0.10-tools
17859   gtk2-engines
17860   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
17861   gtk2-engines-smooth
17862   hamster-applet
17863   libapache2-mod-dnssd
17864   libapr1
17865   libaprutil1
17866   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
17867   libaprutil1-ldap
17868   libart2.0-cil
17869   libboost-date-time1.42.0
17870   libboost-python1.42.0
17871   libboost-thread1.42.0
17872   libchamplain-0.4-0
17873   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
17874   libcheese-gtk18
17875   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
17876   libcryptui0
17877   libdiscid0
17878   libelf1
17879   libepc-1.0-2
17880   libepc-common
17881   libepc-ui-1.0-2
17882   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
17883   libfreerdp0
17884   libgconf2.0-cil
17885   libgdata-common
17886   libgdata7
17887   libgdu-gtk0
17888   libgee2
17889   libgeoclue0
17890   libgexiv2-0
17891   libgif4
17892   libglade2.0-cil
17893   libglib2.0-cil
17894   libgmime2.4-cil
17895   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
17896   libgnome2.24-cil
17897   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
17898   libgpod-common
17899   libgpod4
17900   libgtk2.0-cil
17901   libgtkglext1
17902   libgtksourceview2.0-common
17903   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17904   libmono-addins0.2-cil
17905   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
17906   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17907   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
17908   libmono-posix2.0-cil
17909   libmono-security2.0-cil
17910   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17911   libmono-system2.0-cil
17912   libmtp8
17913   libmusicbrainz3-6
17914   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
17915   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
17916   libopal3.6.8
17917   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
17918   libpt2.6.7
17919   libpython2.6
17920   librpm1
17921   librpmio1
17922   libsdl1.2debian
17923   libsrtp0
17924   libssh-4
17925   libtelepathy-farsight0
17926   libtelepathy-glib0
17927   libtidy-0.99-0
17928   media-player-info
17929   mesa-utils
17930   mono-2.0-gac
17931   mono-gac
17932   mono-runtime
17933   nautilus-sendto
17934   nautilus-sendto-empathy
17935   p7zip-full
17936   pkg-config
17937   python-aptdaemon
17938   python-aptdaemon-gtk
17939   python-axiom
17940   python-beautifulsoup
17941   python-bugbuddy
17942   python-clientform
17943   python-coherence
17944   python-configobj
17945   python-crypto
17946   python-cupshelpers
17947   python-elementtree
17948   python-epsilon
17949   python-evolution
17950   python-feedparser
17951   python-gdata
17952   python-gdbm
17953   python-gst0.10
17954   python-gtkglext1
17955   python-gtksourceview2
17956   python-httplib2
17957   python-louie
17958   python-mako
17959   python-markupsafe
17960   python-mechanize
17961   python-nevow
17962   python-notify
17963   python-opengl
17964   python-openssl
17965   python-pam
17966   python-pkg-resources
17967   python-pyasn1
17968   python-pysqlite2
17969   python-rdflib
17970   python-serial
17971   python-tagpy
17972   python-twisted-bin
17973   python-twisted-conch
17974   python-twisted-core
17975   python-twisted-web
17976   python-utidylib
17977   python-webkit
17978   python-xdg
17979   python-zope.interface
17980   remmina
17981   remmina-plugin-data
17982   remmina-plugin-rdp
17983   remmina-plugin-vnc
17984   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17985   rhythmbox-plugins
17986   rpm-common
17987   rpm2cpio
17988   seahorse-plugins
17989   shotwell
17990   software-center
17991   system-config-printer-udev
17992   telepathy-gabble
17993   telepathy-mission-control-5
17994   telepathy-salut
17995   tomboy
17996   totem
17997   totem-coherence
17998   totem-mozilla
17999   totem-plugins
18000   transmission-common
18001   xdg-user-dirs
18002   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18003   xserver-xephyr
18004 </p></blockquote>
18005
18006 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18007
18008 <blockquote><p>
18009   cheese
18010   ekiga
18011   eog
18012   epiphany-extensions
18013   evolution-exchange
18014   fast-user-switch-applet
18015   file-roller
18016   gcalctool
18017   gconf-editor
18018   gdm
18019   gedit
18020   gedit-common
18021   gnome-games
18022   gnome-games-data
18023   gnome-nettool
18024   gnome-system-tools
18025   gnome-themes
18026   gnuchess
18027   gucharmap
18028   guile-1.8-libs
18029   libavahi-ui0
18030   libdmx1
18031   libgalago3
18032   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18033   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18034   liblircclient0
18035   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18036   libspeexdsp1
18037   libsvga1
18038   rhythmbox
18039   seahorse
18040   sound-juicer
18041   system-config-printer
18042   totem-common
18043   transmission-gtk
18044   vinagre
18045   vino
18046 </p></blockquote>
18047
18048 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18049
18050 <blockquote><p>
18051   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18052 </p></blockquote>
18053
18054 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18055
18056 <blockquote><p>
18057 [nothing]
18058 </p></blockquote>
18059
18060 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18061
18062 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18063
18064 <blockquote><p>
18065   ksmserver
18066 </p></blockquote>
18067
18068 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18069
18070 <blockquote><p>
18071   kwin
18072   network-manager-kde
18073 </p></blockquote>
18074
18075 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18076
18077 <blockquote><p>
18078   arts
18079   dolphin
18080   freespacenotifier
18081   google-gadgets-gst
18082   google-gadgets-xul
18083   kappfinder
18084   kcalc
18085   kcharselect
18086   kde-core
18087   kde-plasma-desktop
18088   kde-standard
18089   kde-window-manager
18090   kdeartwork
18091   kdeartwork-emoticons
18092   kdeartwork-style
18093   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18094   kdebase
18095   kdebase-apps
18096   kdebase-workspace
18097   kdebase-workspace-bin
18098   kdebase-workspace-data
18099   kdeeject
18100   kdelibs
18101   kdeplasma-addons
18102   kdeutils
18103   kdewallpapers
18104   kdf
18105   kfloppy
18106   kgpg
18107   khelpcenter4
18108   kinfocenter
18109   konq-plugins-l10n
18110   konqueror-nsplugins
18111   kscreensaver
18112   kscreensaver-xsavers
18113   ktimer
18114   kwrite
18115   libgle3
18116   libkde4-ruby1.8
18117   libkonq5
18118   libkonq5-templates
18119   libnetpbm10
18120   libplasma-ruby
18121   libplasma-ruby1.8
18122   libqt4-ruby1.8
18123   marble-data
18124   marble-plugins
18125   netpbm
18126   nuvola-icon-theme
18127   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18128   plasma-desktop
18129   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18130   plasma-runners-addons
18131   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18132   plasma-scriptengine-python
18133   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18134   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18135   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18136   plasma-scriptengines
18137   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18138   plasma-widget-folderview
18139   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18140   ruby
18141   sweeper
18142   update-notifier-kde
18143   xscreensaver-data-extra
18144   xscreensaver-gl
18145   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18146   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18147 </p></blockquote>
18148
18149 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18150
18151 <blockquote><p>
18152   ark
18153   google-gadgets-common
18154   google-gadgets-qt
18155   htdig
18156   kate
18157   kdebase-bin
18158   kdebase-data
18159   kdepasswd
18160   kfind
18161   klipper
18162   konq-plugins
18163   konqueror
18164   ksysguard
18165   ksysguardd
18166   libarchive1
18167   libcln6
18168   libeet1
18169   libeina-svn-06
18170   libggadget-1.0-0b
18171   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18172   libgps19
18173   libkdecorations4
18174   libkephal4
18175   libkonq4
18176   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18177   libkscreensaver5
18178   libksgrd4
18179   libksignalplotter4
18180   libkunitconversion4
18181   libkwineffects1a
18182   libmarblewidget4
18183   libntrack-qt4-1
18184   libntrack0
18185   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18186   libplasmaclock4a
18187   libplasmagenericshell4
18188   libprocesscore4a
18189   libprocessui4a
18190   libqalculate5
18191   libqedje0a
18192   libqtruby4shared2
18193   libqzion0a
18194   libruby1.8
18195   libscim8c2a
18196   libsmokekdecore4-3
18197   libsmokekdeui4-3
18198   libsmokekfile3
18199   libsmokekhtml3
18200   libsmokekio3
18201   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18202   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18203   libsmokekparts3
18204   libsmokektexteditor3
18205   libsmokekutils3
18206   libsmokenepomuk3
18207   libsmokephonon3
18208   libsmokeplasma3
18209   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18210   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18211   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18212   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18213   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18214   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18215   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18216   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18217   libsmokeqttest4-3
18218   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18219   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18220   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18221   libsmokesolid3
18222   libsmokesoprano3
18223   libtaskmanager4a
18224   libtidy-0.99-0
18225   libweather-ion4a
18226   libxklavier16
18227   libxxf86misc1
18228   okteta
18229   oxygencursors
18230   plasma-dataengines-addons
18231   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18232   plasma-widget-lancelot
18233   plasma-widgets-addons
18234   plasma-widgets-workspace
18235   polkit-kde-1
18236   ruby1.8
18237   systemsettings
18238   update-notifier-common
18239 </p></blockquote>
18240
18241 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
18242 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
18243 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
18244 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
18245
18246       </div>
18247       <div class="tags">
18248
18249
18250         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>.
18251
18252
18253       </div>
18254     </div>
18255     <div class="padding"></div>
18256
18257     <div class="entry">
18258       <div class="title">
18259         <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>
18260       </div>
18261       <div class="date">
18262         22nd November 2010
18263       </div>
18264       <div class="body">
18265         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
18266 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
18267 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
18268 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
18269 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
18270 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
18271 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
18272 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
18273 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
18274
18275 <p>I found
18276 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
18277 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
18278 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
18279 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
18280 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
18281 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
18282
18283 <pre>
18284 #!/bin/sh
18285
18286 # Based on
18287 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
18288
18289 set -e
18290 set -x
18291
18292 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
18293     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
18294     exit 1
18295 else
18296     host="$1"
18297 fi
18298
18299 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
18300     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
18301     exit 1
18302 fi
18303
18304 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
18305 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18306 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18307 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
18308
18309 img=$host.img
18310 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
18311 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
18312
18313 parted $img mklabel msdos
18314 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
18315 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
18316 parted $img set 1 boot on
18317
18318 modprobe dm-mod
18319 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
18320 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
18321
18322 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
18323 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
18324 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
18325
18326 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
18327 losetup -d /dev/loop0
18328 </pre>
18329
18330 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
18331 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
18332
18333 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
18334 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
18335 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
18336 seem to work just fine.</p>
18337
18338       </div>
18339       <div class="tags">
18340
18341
18342         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>.
18343
18344
18345       </div>
18346     </div>
18347     <div class="padding"></div>
18348
18349     <div class="entry">
18350       <div class="title">
18351         <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>
18352       </div>
18353       <div class="date">
18354         20th November 2010
18355       </div>
18356       <div class="body">
18357         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
18358 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18359 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
18360 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
18361
18362 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
18363 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
18364 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
18365
18366 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18367
18368 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18369
18370 <blockquote><p>
18371   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
18372   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
18373   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
18374   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
18375   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
18376   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
18377   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
18378   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
18379   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
18380   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
18381   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18382   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18383   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
18384   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
18385   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
18386   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
18387   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18388   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
18389   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18390   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
18391   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
18392   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18393   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
18394   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
18395   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
18396   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18397   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18398   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
18399   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18400   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
18401   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
18402   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18403   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
18404   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
18405   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
18406   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
18407   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
18408   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
18409   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
18410   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
18411   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
18412   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
18413   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
18414   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
18415   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
18416   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
18417   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
18418   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
18419   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
18420   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
18421   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
18422   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
18423   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18424   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
18425   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
18426   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
18427   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
18428   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
18429   zip
18430 </p></blockquote>
18431
18432 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
18433
18434 <blockquote><p>
18435   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
18436   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
18437   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
18438   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
18439   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
18440   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
18441   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
18442   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
18443   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
18444   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
18445   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
18446   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18447   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18448   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18449   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18450   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
18451   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18452   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
18453   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
18454   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
18455   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
18456   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
18457   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18458   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
18459   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
18460   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
18461   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
18462   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
18463   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
18464 </p></blockquote>
18465
18466 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18467
18468 <blockquote><p>
18469   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18470 </p></blockquote>
18471
18472 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18473
18474 <blockquote><p>
18475 [nothing]
18476 </p></blockquote>
18477
18478 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18479
18480 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18481
18482 <blockquote><p>
18483   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
18484   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18485   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
18486   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
18487   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
18488   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
18489   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18490   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
18491   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
18492   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18493   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
18494   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
18495   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
18496   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
18497   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
18498   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
18499   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
18500   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
18501   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
18502   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
18503   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
18504   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
18505   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
18506   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
18507   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
18508   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
18509   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
18510   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
18511   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
18512   ttf-sazanami-gothic
18513 </p></blockquote>
18514
18515 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18516
18517 <blockquote><p>
18518   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
18519   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
18520   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
18521   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
18522   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
18523   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
18524   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
18525   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
18526   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
18527   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
18528   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
18529   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
18530   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
18531   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
18532   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18533   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18534   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
18535   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
18536   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18537   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
18538   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18539   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
18540   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18541   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18542   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
18543   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
18544   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
18545   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
18546   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
18547   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
18548   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
18549   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
18550   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
18551 </p></blockquote>
18552
18553 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18554
18555 <blockquote><p>
18556   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
18557   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
18558   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
18559   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
18560   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18561   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
18562   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18563 </p></blockquote>
18564
18565 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18566
18567 <blockquote><p>
18568   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
18569 </p></blockquote>
18570
18571       </div>
18572       <div class="tags">
18573
18574
18575         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>.
18576
18577
18578       </div>
18579     </div>
18580     <div class="padding"></div>
18581
18582     <div class="entry">
18583       <div class="title">
18584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
18585       </div>
18586       <div class="date">
18587         20th November 2010
18588       </div>
18589       <div class="body">
18590         <p>Answering
18591 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18592 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18593 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18594 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18595 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18596 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
18597 releases out more often.</p>
18598
18599 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
18600 I have considered setting up a <a
18601 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
18602 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
18603 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
18604 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
18605 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
18606 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
18607 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
18608 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
18609 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
18610 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
18611 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
18612 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
18613
18614       </div>
18615       <div class="tags">
18616
18617
18618         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>.
18619
18620
18621       </div>
18622     </div>
18623     <div class="padding"></div>
18624
18625     <div class="entry">
18626       <div class="title">
18627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
18628       </div>
18629       <div class="date">
18630          9th November 2010
18631       </div>
18632       <div class="body">
18633         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
18634
18635 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
18636 3D linked in from
18637 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
18638 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
18639
18640       </div>
18641       <div class="tags">
18642
18643
18644         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>.
18645
18646
18647       </div>
18648     </div>
18649     <div class="padding"></div>
18650
18651     <div class="entry">
18652       <div class="title">
18653         <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>
18654       </div>
18655       <div class="date">
18656          7th November 2010
18657       </div>
18658       <div class="body">
18659         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
18660 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
18661 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
18662 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
18663 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
18664 working using this DVD.</p>
18665
18666 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
18667 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
18668 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
18669 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
18670 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
18671 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
18672 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
18673
18674 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
18675 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
18676 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
18677 Debian archive.</p>
18678
18679 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
18680 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
18681 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
18682 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
18683 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
18684 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
18685 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
18686 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
18687 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
18688 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
18689 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
18690 free X driver should work.</p>
18691
18692 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
18693 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
18694 DVD more useful again.</p>
18695
18696       </div>
18697       <div class="tags">
18698
18699
18700         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>.
18701
18702
18703       </div>
18704     </div>
18705     <div class="padding"></div>
18706
18707     <div class="entry">
18708       <div class="title">
18709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
18710       </div>
18711       <div class="date">
18712         24th October 2010
18713       </div>
18714       <div class="body">
18715         <p>Some updates.</p>
18716
18717 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
18718 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
18719 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
18720 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
18721 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
18722 :)</p>
18723
18724 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
18725 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
18726 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
18727 It is called
18728 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
18729 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
18730 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
18731 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
18732 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
18733 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
18734
18735 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
18736 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
18737 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
18738 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
18739 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
18740 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
18741 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
18742 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
18743 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
18744 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
18745
18746       </div>
18747       <div class="tags">
18748
18749
18750         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>.
18751
18752
18753       </div>
18754     </div>
18755     <div class="padding"></div>
18756
18757     <div class="entry">
18758       <div class="title">
18759         <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>
18760       </div>
18761       <div class="date">
18762         19th October 2010
18763       </div>
18764       <div class="body">
18765         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
18766 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
18767 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
18768 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
18769 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
18770 AVM2 flash files.</p>
18771
18772 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
18773 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
18774 following text:</P>
18775
18776 <p><blockquote>
18777
18778   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
18779   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
18780
18781   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
18782
18783   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
18784
18785   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
18786   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
18787   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
18788   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
18789   days. The project web page is available from
18790   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
18791   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
18792   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
18793
18794   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
18795   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
18796   to get this to happen.</p>
18797
18798   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
18799   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
18800
18801 </blockquote></p>
18802
18803 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
18804 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
18805 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
18806 :)</p>
18807
18808       </div>
18809       <div class="tags">
18810
18811
18812         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>.
18813
18814
18815       </div>
18816     </div>
18817     <div class="padding"></div>
18818
18819     <div class="entry">
18820       <div class="title">
18821         <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>
18822       </div>
18823       <div class="date">
18824          9th October 2010
18825       </div>
18826       <div class="body">
18827         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
18828 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
18829 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
18830 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
18831 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
18832 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
18833 robots.</p>
18834
18835 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
18836 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
18837 a few less important features too.</p>
18838
18839 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
18840 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
18841 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
18842 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
18843
18844 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
18845 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
18846 source or binary package:</p>
18847
18848 <p><ul>
18849 <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>
18850 <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>
18851 <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>
18852 </ul></p>
18853
18854 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
18855 please let me know.</p>
18856
18857       </div>
18858       <div class="tags">
18859
18860
18861         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>.
18862
18863
18864       </div>
18865     </div>
18866     <div class="padding"></div>
18867
18868     <div class="entry">
18869       <div class="title">
18870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
18871       </div>
18872       <div class="date">
18873          3rd October 2010
18874       </div>
18875       <div class="body">
18876         <p><ul>
18877
18878 <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
18879 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
18880
18881 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
18882 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
18883 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
18884
18885 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
18886 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
18887 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
18888 simple setup.
18889
18890 </ul></p>
18891
18892       </div>
18893       <div class="tags">
18894
18895
18896         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>.
18897
18898
18899       </div>
18900     </div>
18901     <div class="padding"></div>
18902
18903     <div class="entry">
18904       <div class="title">
18905         <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>
18906       </div>
18907       <div class="date">
18908          9th September 2010
18909       </div>
18910       <div class="body">
18911         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
18912 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
18913 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
18914 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
18915 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
18916 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
18917 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
18918 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
18919 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
18920
18921 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
18922 written:</p>
18923
18924 <blockquote>
18925 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
18926 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
18927 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
18928 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
18929 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
18930
18931 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
18932 standard.</p>
18933 </blockquote>
18934
18935 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
18936 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
18937 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
18938 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
18939
18940 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
18941 read
18942 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
18943 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
18944 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
18945 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
18946 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
18947 the issue.  The solution is to support the
18948 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
18949 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
18950 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
18951
18952       </div>
18953       <div class="tags">
18954
18955
18956         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/h264">h264</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>.
18957
18958
18959       </div>
18960     </div>
18961     <div class="padding"></div>
18962
18963     <div class="entry">
18964       <div class="title">
18965         <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>
18966       </div>
18967       <div class="date">
18968          4th September 2010
18969       </div>
18970       <div class="body">
18971         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
18972 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
18973 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
18974 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
18975 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
18976 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
18977 installed.</p>
18978
18979 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
18980 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
18981 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
18982 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
18983 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18984 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
18985 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
18986 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
18987 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
18988
18989 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
18990 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
18991 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
18992 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
18993 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
18994 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
18995 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
18996 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
18997 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
18998 pages they want to visit.</p>
18999
19000 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19001 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19002 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19003 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19004 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19005 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19006 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19007 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19008 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19009 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19010 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19011
19012       </div>
19013       <div class="tags">
19014
19015
19016         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>.
19017
19018
19019       </div>
19020     </div>
19021     <div class="padding"></div>
19022
19023     <div class="entry">
19024       <div class="title">
19025         <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>
19026       </div>
19027       <div class="date">
19028          1st September 2010
19029       </div>
19030       <div class="body">
19031         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19032 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19033 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19034 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19035 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19036 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19037 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19038 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19039 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19040 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19041 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19042 drive around.</p>
19043
19044 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19045 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19046
19047 <p><pre>
19048 use Spykee;
19049 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19050 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19051 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19052 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19053 $spykee->left();
19054 sleep 2;
19055 $spykee->right();
19056 sleep 2;
19057 $spykee->forward();
19058 sleep 2;
19059 $spykee->back();
19060 sleep 2;
19061 $spykee->stop();
19062 </pre></p>
19063
19064 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19065 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19066 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19067 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19068 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19069 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19070 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19071 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19072 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19073 going. :).</p>
19074
19075 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19076 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19077 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19078 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19079
19080       </div>
19081       <div class="tags">
19082
19083
19084         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>.
19085
19086
19087       </div>
19088     </div>
19089     <div class="padding"></div>
19090
19091     <div class="entry">
19092       <div class="title">
19093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19094       </div>
19095       <div class="date">
19096         30th August 2010
19097       </div>
19098       <div class="body">
19099         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19100 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19101 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19102 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19103 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19104 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19105 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19106
19107 <pre>
19108 % ln foo bar
19109 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19110 %
19111 </pre>
19112
19113 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19114 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19115 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19116 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19117 nevertheless. :)</p>
19118
19119 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19120 git from
19121 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19122
19123       </div>
19124       <div class="tags">
19125
19126
19127         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>.
19128
19129
19130       </div>
19131     </div>
19132     <div class="padding"></div>
19133
19134     <div class="entry">
19135       <div class="title">
19136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19137       </div>
19138       <div class="date">
19139         26th August 2010
19140       </div>
19141       <div class="body">
19142         <p>My file system sematics program
19143 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19144 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19145 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19146 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19147 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19148 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19149 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19150 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19151 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19152 script:</p>
19153
19154 <pre>
19155 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19156   mode_t retval = 0;
19157   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19158   if (-1 != fd) {
19159     unlink(name);
19160     struct stat statbuf;
19161     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19162       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19163     }
19164     close(fd);
19165   }
19166   return retval;
19167 }
19168
19169 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19170 int test_umask(void) {
19171   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19172
19173   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19174   mode_t newmode;
19175   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19176     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19177            newmode);
19178   }
19179   umask(007);
19180   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19181     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19182            newmode);
19183   }
19184
19185   umask (orig_umask);
19186   return 0;
19187 }
19188
19189 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19190   [...]
19191   test_umask();
19192   return 0;
19193 }
19194 </pre>
19195
19196 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19197
19198 <pre>
19199 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19200 info: testing symlink creation
19201 info: testing subdirectory creation
19202 info: testing fcntl locking
19203   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19204   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19205   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19206   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19207   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19208   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19209 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19210 </pre>
19211
19212 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19213 result:</p>
19214
19215 <pre>
19216 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19217 info: testing symlink creation
19218 info: testing subdirectory creation
19219 info: testing fcntl locking
19220   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19221   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19222   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19223   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19224   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19225   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19226 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19227   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19228   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19229 </pre>
19230
19231 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19232 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19233 directory.</p>
19234
19235 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
19236 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
19237
19238 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19239 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19240 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19241
19242       </div>
19243       <div class="tags">
19244
19245
19246         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>.
19247
19248
19249       </div>
19250     </div>
19251     <div class="padding"></div>
19252
19253     <div class="entry">
19254       <div class="title">
19255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
19256       </div>
19257       <div class="date">
19258         15th August 2010
19259       </div>
19260       <div class="body">
19261         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
19262 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
19263 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
19264 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
19265 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
19266 long time.</p>
19267
19268       </div>
19269       <div class="tags">
19270
19271
19272         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>.
19273
19274
19275       </div>
19276     </div>
19277     <div class="padding"></div>
19278
19279     <div class="entry">
19280       <div class="title">
19281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
19282       </div>
19283       <div class="date">
19284          9th August 2010
19285       </div>
19286       <div class="body">
19287         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
19288 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
19289 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
19290 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
19291 generated configuration.</p>
19292
19293 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
19294 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
19295 without any manual configuration.</p>
19296
19297 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
19298 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
19299 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
19300 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
19301 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
19302 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
19303 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
19304 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
19305 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
19306 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
19307 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
19308 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
19309 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
19310 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
19311 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
19312 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
19313 use.</p>
19314
19315 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
19316 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
19317 working properly out of the box:</p>
19318
19319 <ul>
19320 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
19321 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
19322 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
19323 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
19324 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
19325 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
19326 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
19327 </ul>
19328
19329 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
19330
19331 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
19332 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
19333 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
19334 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
19335 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
19336
19337 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
19338 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
19339 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
19340 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
19341 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
19342 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
19343 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
19344 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
19345
19346 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
19347 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
19348 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
19349 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
19350 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
19351 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
19352 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
19353 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
19354 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
19355 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
19356 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
19357 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19358 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
19359 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
19360 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
19361 current DNS domain is used.</p>
19362
19363 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
19364 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
19365 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
19366 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
19367 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
19368 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
19369 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
19370 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
19371 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
19372 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
19373 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
19374 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
19375 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
19376
19377 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
19378 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
19379 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
19380 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
19381 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
19382 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
19383 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
19384 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
19385 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
19386 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
19387 do for now. :)</p>
19388
19389 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
19390 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
19391 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
19392 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
19393 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
19394 yet.</p>
19395
19396 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19397 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19398
19399 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
19400 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
19401 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
19402 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
19403
19404       </div>
19405       <div class="tags">
19406
19407
19408         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>.
19409
19410
19411       </div>
19412     </div>
19413     <div class="padding"></div>
19414
19415     <div class="entry">
19416       <div class="title">
19417         <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>
19418       </div>
19419       <div class="date">
19420          8th August 2010
19421       </div>
19422       <div class="body">
19423         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
19424 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
19425 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
19426 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
19427 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
19428 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
19429 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
19430
19431 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
19432 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
19433 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
19434 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
19435 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
19436 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
19437 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
19438
19439 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
19440 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
19441 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
19442 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
19443 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
19444
19445 <pre>
19446 /*
19447  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
19448  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
19449  * directory.
19450  * License: GPL v2 or later
19451  *
19452  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
19453  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
19454 */
19455
19456 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
19457 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
19458 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
19459
19460 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
19461
19462 #include &lt;errno.h>
19463 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
19464 #include &lt;stdio.h>
19465 #include &lt;string.h>
19466 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
19467 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
19468 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
19469 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
19470 #include &lt;unistd.h>
19471
19472 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19473 /*
19474  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
19475  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
19476  * below.
19477  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
19478  */
19479 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
19480 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
19481   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
19482 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
19483   char *zErrMsg;
19484   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19485   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
19486   unlink(name);
19487   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
19488   if( rc ){
19489     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
19490     sqlite3_close(db);
19491     return -1;
19492   }
19493
19494   /* create tables */
19495   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
19496   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
19497     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
19498     sqlite3_close(db);
19499     return -1;
19500   }
19501   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
19502   sqlite3_close(db);
19503   return 0;
19504 }
19505 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19506
19507 /*
19508  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
19509  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
19510  * done in the sqlite3 library.
19511  * See also
19512  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
19513  * POSIX specification
19514  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
19515  */
19516 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
19517   struct flock fl;
19518   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19519   unlink(name);
19520   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
19521   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
19522
19523   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
19524   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
19525   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19526   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19527   fl.l_len    = 1;
19528   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19529   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19530
19531   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19532   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19533   fl.l_len    = 510;
19534   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19535   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19536
19537   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19538   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19539   fl.l_len    = 1;
19540   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19541   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19542
19543   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19544   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19545   fl.l_len    = 1;
19546   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
19547   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19548
19549   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19550   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19551   fl.l_len    = 510;
19552   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19553
19554   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
19555   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19556   fl.l_len    = 2;
19557   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19558   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19559
19560   close(fd);
19561   return 0;
19562 }
19563
19564 /*
19565  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
19566  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
19567  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
19568  * slowing down file operations.
19569  */
19570 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
19571 #define LEVELS 5
19572   char *path = strdup("test");
19573   char *dirs[LEVELS];
19574   int level;
19575   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
19576   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
19577     char *newpath = NULL;
19578     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
19579       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
19580              path, strerror(errno));
19581       break;
19582     }
19583     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
19584     free(path);
19585     path = newpath;
19586   }
19587   return 0;
19588 }
19589
19590 /*
19591  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19592  * KDE.
19593  */
19594 int test_symlinks(void) {
19595   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19596   unlink("symlink");
19597   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
19598     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
19599   return 0;
19600 }
19601
19602 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19603   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
19604   test_symlinks();
19605   test_subdirectory_creation();
19606 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19607   test_sqlite_open();
19608 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19609   test_gcompris_locking();
19610   return 0;
19611 }
19612 </pre>
19613
19614 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
19615 this:</p>
19616
19617 <pre>
19618 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19619 info: testing symlink creation
19620 info: testing subdirectory creation
19621 info: sqlite worked
19622 info: testing fcntl locking
19623   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19624   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19625   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19626   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19627   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19628   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19629 </pre>
19630
19631 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
19632 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
19633 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
19634 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
19635 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
19636 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
19637 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
19638 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
19639
19640 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
19641 it. :)</p>
19642
19643 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19644 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19645 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19646
19647       </div>
19648       <div class="tags">
19649
19650
19651         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>.
19652
19653
19654       </div>
19655     </div>
19656     <div class="padding"></div>
19657
19658     <div class="entry">
19659       <div class="title">
19660         <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>
19661       </div>
19662       <div class="date">
19663          7th August 2010
19664       </div>
19665       <div class="body">
19666         <p>A few days ago, I
19667 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
19668 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
19669 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
19670 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
19671 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
19672 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
19673 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
19674 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
19675 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
19676
19677 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
19678 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
19679 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
19680 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
19681 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
19682 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
19683 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
19684 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
19685 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
19686 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
19687 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
19688 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
19689 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
19690 gave it a IP address.</p>
19691
19692 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
19693 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
19694 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
19695 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
19696 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
19697 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19698 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
19699 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
19700
19701 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
19702 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
19703 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
19704 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
19705 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
19706 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
19707
19708 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
19709 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
19710 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
19711 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
19712 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
19713 with UID and GID values.</p>
19714
19715 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19716 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19717
19718       </div>
19719       <div class="tags">
19720
19721
19722         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>.
19723
19724
19725       </div>
19726     </div>
19727     <div class="padding"></div>
19728
19729     <div class="entry">
19730       <div class="title">
19731         <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>
19732       </div>
19733       <div class="date">
19734          3rd August 2010
19735       </div>
19736       <div class="body">
19737         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
19738 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
19739 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
19740 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
19741 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
19742 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
19743 servers.</p>
19744
19745 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
19746 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
19747 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
19748 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
19749 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
19750 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
19751 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
19752 .uio.no.</p>
19753
19754 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
19755 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
19756 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
19757 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
19758 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
19759 university servers.</p>
19760
19761 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
19762 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
19763 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
19764 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
19765 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
19766 uses.</p>
19767
19768       </div>
19769       <div class="tags">
19770
19771
19772         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>.
19773
19774
19775       </div>
19776     </div>
19777     <div class="padding"></div>
19778
19779     <div class="entry">
19780       <div class="title">
19781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
19782       </div>
19783       <div class="date">
19784         27th July 2010
19785       </div>
19786       <div class="body">
19787         <p>I discovered this while doing
19788 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
19789 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
19790 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
19791 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
19792 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
19793
19794 <p>An example is from todays
19795 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
19796 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
19797 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
19798 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
19799 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
19800 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
19801 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
19802
19803 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
19804
19805 <blockquote><pre>
19806 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
19807  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
19808   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
19809 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
19810  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
19811 </pre></blockquote>
19812
19813 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
19814 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
19815 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
19816 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
19817 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
19818 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
19819 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
19820 of dependency loops.</p>
19821
19822 <p>Thanks to
19823 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
19824 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
19825 dependencies
19826 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
19827 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
19828
19829 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
19830 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
19831 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
19832 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
19833 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
19834 it.</p>
19835
19836       </div>
19837       <div class="tags">
19838
19839
19840         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>.
19841
19842
19843       </div>
19844     </div>
19845     <div class="padding"></div>
19846
19847     <div class="entry">
19848       <div class="title">
19849         <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>
19850       </div>
19851       <div class="date">
19852         27th July 2010
19853       </div>
19854       <div class="body">
19855         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
19856 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
19857 completed.</p>
19858
19859 <blockquote>
19860 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
19861 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
19862 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
19863 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
19864 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
19865 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
19866 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
19867 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
19868
19869 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
19870 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
19871 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
19872
19873 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
19874 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
19875 much.</p>
19876
19877 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
19878
19879 <ul>
19880 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
19881 <ul>
19882   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
19883          combination with some new artwork
19884   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
19885   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
19886   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
19887   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
19888   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
19889   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
19890   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
19891   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
19892   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
19893 </ul></li>
19894 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
19895     Enabled for:
19896 <ul>
19897   <li>PAM
19898   <li>LDAP
19899   <li>IMAP
19900   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
19901 </ul>
19902 </li>
19903 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
19904 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
19905     fetched from LDAP.</li>
19906 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
19907 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
19908 </ul>
19909 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
19910
19911 <ul>
19912 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
19913     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
19914     for testing.</li>
19915 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
19916     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
19917     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
19918 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
19919 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
19920 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
19921 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
19922     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
19923 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
19924     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
19925     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
19926 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
19927     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
19928     and help out with translations.</li>
19929 </ul>
19930
19931 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
19932
19933 <ul>
19934 <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>
19935 <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>
19936 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19937 </ul>
19938 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
19939
19940 <ul>
19941 <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>
19942 <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>
19943 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19944 </ul>
19945
19946 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
19947 get closer to the final release.</p>
19948
19949 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
19950
19951 <ul>
19952 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19953 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19954 </ul>
19955
19956 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
19957 <ul>
19958 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19959 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19960 </ul>
19961 <p>How to report bugs:
19962 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
19963
19964 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
19965 </blockquote>
19966
19967       </div>
19968       <div class="tags">
19969
19970
19971         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>.
19972
19973
19974       </div>
19975     </div>
19976     <div class="padding"></div>
19977
19978     <div class="entry">
19979       <div class="title">
19980         <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>
19981       </div>
19982       <div class="date">
19983         25th July 2010
19984       </div>
19985       <div class="body">
19986         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
19987 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
19988 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
19989 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
19990 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
19991
19992 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
19993 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
19994 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
19995 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
19996 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
19997 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
19998 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
19999
20000 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20001 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20002 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20003 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20004 up. :)</p>
20005
20006 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20007 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20008 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20009
20010 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20011 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20012 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20013 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20014 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20015 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20016 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20017 release another day.</p>
20018
20019 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20020 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20021
20022       </div>
20023       <div class="tags">
20024
20025
20026         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>.
20027
20028
20029       </div>
20030     </div>
20031     <div class="padding"></div>
20032
20033     <div class="entry">
20034       <div class="title">
20035         <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>
20036       </div>
20037       <div class="date">
20038         18th July 2010
20039       </div>
20040       <div class="body">
20041         <p>Thanks to
20042 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20043 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20044 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20045 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20046 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20047 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20048 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20049
20050 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20051 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20052 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20053 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20054 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20055 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20056 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20057
20058       </div>
20059       <div class="tags">
20060
20061
20062         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>.
20063
20064
20065       </div>
20066     </div>
20067     <div class="padding"></div>
20068
20069     <div class="entry">
20070       <div class="title">
20071         <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>
20072       </div>
20073       <div class="date">
20074         17th July 2010
20075       </div>
20076       <div class="body">
20077         <p>This is a
20078 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20079 on my
20080 <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
20081 work</a> on
20082 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20083 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20084
20085 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20086 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20087 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20088 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20089
20090 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20091 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20092 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20093
20094 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20095
20096 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20097 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20098 the web.
20099
20100 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20101 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20102 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20103 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20104 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20105 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20106
20107 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20108 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20109 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20110 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20111 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20112 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20113 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20114 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20115 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20116 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20117 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20118 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20119 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20120 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20121 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20122 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20123
20124 <blockquote><pre>
20125 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20126   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20127   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20128   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20129   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20130   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20131   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20132
20133 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20134   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20135   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20136   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20137   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20138   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20139 </pre></blockquote>
20140
20141 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20142 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20143 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20144 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20145 also exist.</p>
20146
20147 <blockquote><pre>
20148 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20149 objectclass: top
20150 objectclass: dnsdomain
20151 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20152 dc: tjener
20153 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20154 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20155
20156 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20157 objectclass: top
20158 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20159 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20160 dc: 2
20161 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20162 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20163 </pre></blockquote>
20164
20165 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20166 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20167 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20168 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20169 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20170 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20171 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20172 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20173 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20174 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20175 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20176 instead.</p>
20177
20178 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20179 like this:</p>
20180
20181 <blockquote><pre>
20182 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20183   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20184   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20185   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20186   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20187   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20188
20189 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20190   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20191 </pre></blockquote>
20192
20193 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20194 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20195 reverse lookups.</p>
20196
20197 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20198 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20199 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20200 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20201
20202 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20203 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20204 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20205
20206 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20207 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20208 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20209 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20210 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20211
20212 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20213 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20214 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20215 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20216 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20217
20218 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20219 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20220 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20221 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20222 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20223 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20224
20225 <blockquote><pre>
20226 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20227     SUP top
20228     AUXILIARY
20229     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20230           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20231           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20232           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20233           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20234     ))
20235 </pre></blockquote>
20236
20237 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
20238 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
20239 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
20240 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
20241 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
20242 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
20243
20244 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
20245
20246 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
20247 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
20248 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
20249 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
20250 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
20251
20252 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
20253 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
20254 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
20255 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
20256
20257 <blockquote><pre>
20258 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
20259 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
20260 </pre></blockquote>
20261
20262 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
20263 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
20264 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
20265 search result is this entry:</p>
20266
20267 <blockquote><pre>
20268 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20269 cn: dhcp
20270 objectClass: top
20271 objectClass: dhcpServer
20272 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20273 </pre></blockquote>
20274
20275 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
20276 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
20277 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
20278 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
20279 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
20280 The search result is this entry:</p>
20281
20282 <blockquote><pre>
20283 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20284 cn: DHCP Config
20285 objectClass: top
20286 objectClass: dhcpService
20287 objectClass: dhcpOptions
20288 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20289 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
20290 dhcpStatements: authoritative
20291 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
20292 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
20293 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
20294 </pre></blockquote>
20295
20296 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
20297 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
20298 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
20299 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
20300 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
20301 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
20302 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
20303 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
20304 related computer objects.</p>
20305
20306 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
20307 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
20308 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
20309 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
20310 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
20311 like:</p>
20312
20313 <blockquote><pre>
20314 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20315 cn: hostname
20316 objectClass: top
20317 objectClass: dhcpHost
20318 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20319 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
20320 </pre></blockquote>
20321
20322 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
20323 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
20324 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
20325 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
20326 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
20327 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
20328 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
20329 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
20330 structural object class.
20331
20332 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20333
20334 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
20335 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
20336 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
20337 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
20338 in the configuration.</p>
20339
20340 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
20341 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
20342 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
20343 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
20344 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
20345 structure.</p>
20346
20347 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
20348 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
20349
20350 <blockquote><pre>
20351 ou=services
20352   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
20353     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
20354     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20355       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20356         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20357     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20358       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20359         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20360     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
20361       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
20362 </pre></blockquote>
20363
20364 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
20365 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
20366 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
20367 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
20368
20369 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
20370 like this:</p>
20371
20372 <blockquote><pre>
20373 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20374 dc: hostname
20375 objectClass: top
20376 objectClass: dhcpHost
20377 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20378 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
20379 associateddomain: hostname.intern
20380 arecord: 10.11.12.13
20381 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20382 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
20383 </pre></blockquote>
20384
20385 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
20386 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
20387 auxiliary object class.</p>
20388
20389       </div>
20390       <div class="tags">
20391
20392
20393         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>.
20394
20395
20396       </div>
20397     </div>
20398     <div class="padding"></div>
20399
20400     <div class="entry">
20401       <div class="title">
20402         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
20403       </div>
20404       <div class="date">
20405         14th July 2010
20406       </div>
20407       <div class="body">
20408         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
20409 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
20410 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
20411 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
20412 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
20413
20414 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
20415 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
20416
20417 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
20418 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
20419 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
20420 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
20421 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
20422 to a slave DNS server.</p>
20423
20424 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
20425 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
20426 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
20427 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
20428 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
20429 seem to work.</p>
20430
20431 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
20432 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
20433 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
20434 this:</p>
20435
20436 <blockquote><pre>
20437   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20438   cn: hostname
20439   objectClass: dhcphost
20440   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20441   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
20442   associateddomain: hostname.intern
20443   arecord: 10.11.12.13
20444   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20445   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
20446   ldapconfigsound: Y
20447 </pre></blockquote>
20448
20449 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
20450 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
20451 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
20452 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
20453
20454 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
20455 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
20456 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
20457 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
20458 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
20459 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
20460 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
20461 might be a good place to put it.</p>
20462
20463 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20464 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20465
20466       </div>
20467       <div class="tags">
20468
20469
20470         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>.
20471
20472
20473       </div>
20474     </div>
20475     <div class="padding"></div>
20476
20477     <div class="entry">
20478       <div class="title">
20479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
20480       </div>
20481       <div class="date">
20482         11th July 2010
20483       </div>
20484       <div class="body">
20485         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
20486 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
20487 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
20488 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
20489
20490 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
20491 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
20492 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
20493 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
20494 LTSP clients.</p>
20495
20496 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
20497 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
20498 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
20499
20500 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
20501 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
20502 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
20503
20504 <blockquote><pre>
20505 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
20506 #
20507 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
20508 #
20509 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
20510 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
20511 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
20512 #
20513 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
20514 # existence of attribute names.
20515 #
20516 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
20517 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
20518 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
20519 #
20520 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
20521 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
20522 #
20523 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
20524 #     SUP top
20525 #     AUXILIARY
20526 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
20527
20528 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
20529 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
20530     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
20531     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
20532         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
20533         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
20534             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
20535             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
20536             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
20537             # bass value on to clients
20538             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
20539         done
20540     done
20541 fi
20542 </pre></blockquote>
20543
20544 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
20545 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
20546 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
20547 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
20548 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
20549
20550 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20551 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20552
20553 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
20554 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
20555 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
20556 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
20557 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
20558 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
20559
20560       </div>
20561       <div class="tags">
20562
20563
20564         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>.
20565
20566
20567       </div>
20568     </div>
20569     <div class="padding"></div>
20570
20571     <div class="entry">
20572       <div class="title">
20573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20574       </div>
20575       <div class="date">
20576          9th July 2010
20577       </div>
20578       <div class="body">
20579         <p>Since
20580 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
20581 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
20582 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
20583 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
20584 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
20585 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
20586 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20587 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20588 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20589 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20590 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20591 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20592 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20593
20594       </div>
20595       <div class="tags">
20596
20597
20598         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>.
20599
20600
20601       </div>
20602     </div>
20603     <div class="padding"></div>
20604
20605     <div class="entry">
20606       <div class="title">
20607         <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>
20608       </div>
20609       <div class="date">
20610          3rd July 2010
20611       </div>
20612       <div class="body">
20613         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
20614 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
20615 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
20616 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
20617 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
20618 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
20619 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
20620 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
20621
20622 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
20623 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
20624 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
20625 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
20626 publish the difference.</p>
20627
20628 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
20629
20630 <blockquote><p>
20631   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
20632   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
20633   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
20634   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
20635   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
20636   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20637   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
20638   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
20639 </p></blockquote>
20640
20641 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
20642
20643 <blockquote><p>
20644   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
20645   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
20646   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
20647   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
20648   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
20649   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
20650   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
20651   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
20652   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20653   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20654   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
20655   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
20656   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
20657   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
20658   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
20659   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
20660   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
20661   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
20662   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
20663   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
20664 </p></blockquote>
20665
20666 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
20667
20668 <blockquote><p>
20669   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
20670   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
20671   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20672   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20673   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
20674   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
20675   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
20676   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20677   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20678   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20679   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20680   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
20681   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
20682   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
20683   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
20684   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
20685   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
20686   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
20687   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
20688   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
20689   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
20690 </p></blockquote>
20691
20692 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
20693
20694 <blockquote><p>
20695   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
20696   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
20697   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
20698 </p></blockquote>
20699
20700 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
20701 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
20702 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
20703 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
20704 the difference somewhat.
20705
20706       </div>
20707       <div class="tags">
20708
20709
20710         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>.
20711
20712
20713       </div>
20714     </div>
20715     <div class="padding"></div>
20716
20717     <div class="entry">
20718       <div class="title">
20719         <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>
20720       </div>
20721       <div class="date">
20722          1st July 2010
20723       </div>
20724       <div class="body">
20725         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
20726 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
20727 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
20728 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
20729 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
20730 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
20731 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
20732 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
20733 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
20734
20735 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20736
20737 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
20738 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
20739 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
20740 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
20741 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
20742 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
20743 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
20744 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
20745 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
20746 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
20747 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
20748 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
20749 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
20750 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
20751 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
20752
20753 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
20754
20755 <blockquote><pre>
20756 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
20757 </pre></blockquote>
20758
20759 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
20760 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
20761 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
20762 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
20763 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
20764 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
20765 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
20766 on how to get this working.</p>
20767
20768 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
20769 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
20770 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
20771 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
20772 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
20773 instructions I found in the
20774 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
20775 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
20776
20777 <blockquote><pre>
20778         debug-level             0
20779         reload-count            unlimited
20780         paranoia                no
20781
20782         enable-cache            passwd          yes
20783         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
20784         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
20785         suggested-size          passwd          211
20786         check-files             passwd          yes
20787         persistent              passwd          yes
20788         shared                  passwd          yes
20789         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
20790         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
20791
20792         enable-cache            group           yes
20793         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
20794         negative-time-to-live   group           20
20795         suggested-size          group           211
20796         check-files             group           yes
20797         persistent              group           yes
20798         shared                  group           yes
20799         max-db-size             group           33554432
20800         auto-propagate          group           yes
20801
20802         enable-cache            hosts           no
20803         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
20804         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
20805         suggested-size          hosts           211
20806         check-files             hosts           yes
20807         persistent              hosts           yes
20808         shared                  hosts           yes
20809         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
20810
20811         enable-cache            services        yes
20812         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
20813         negative-time-to-live   services        20
20814         suggested-size          services        211
20815         check-files             services        yes
20816         persistent              services        yes
20817         shared                  services        yes
20818         max-db-size             services        33554432
20819 </pre></blockquote>
20820
20821 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
20822 automatically like the one provided in
20823 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
20824 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
20825 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
20826 look like this:</p>
20827
20828 <blockquote><pre>
20829 passwd:         files ldap
20830 group:          files ldap
20831 shadow:         files ldap
20832 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
20833 networks:       files
20834 protocols:      files
20835 services:       files
20836 ethers:         files
20837 rpc:            files
20838 netgroup:       files ldap
20839 </pre></blockquote>
20840
20841 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
20842 shadow and netgroup.</p>
20843
20844 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
20845 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
20846 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
20847 attributes cached.
20848
20849 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
20850   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20851
20852 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
20853 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
20854 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
20855 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
20856 discovered sssd.</p>
20857
20858 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
20859
20860 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
20861 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
20862 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
20863 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
20864 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
20865 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
20866 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
20867 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
20868 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
20869 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
20870 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
20871 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
20872 version 1.2 is now in testing.
20873
20874 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
20875 roaming setup I want</p>
20876
20877 <blockquote><pre>
20878 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
20879 </pre></blockquote>
20880
20881 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
20882 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
20883
20884 <blockquote><pre>
20885 [sssd]
20886 config_file_version = 2
20887 reconnection_retries = 3
20888 sbus_timeout = 30
20889 services = nss, pam
20890 domains = INTERN
20891
20892 [nss]
20893 filter_groups = root
20894 filter_users = root
20895 reconnection_retries = 3
20896
20897 [pam]
20898 reconnection_retries = 3
20899
20900 [domain/INTERN]
20901 enumerate = false
20902 cache_credentials = true
20903
20904 id_provider = ldap
20905 auth_provider = ldap
20906 chpass_provider = ldap
20907
20908 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
20909 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20910 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
20911 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
20912 </pre></blockquote>
20913
20914 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
20915 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
20916
20917 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
20918 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
20919 modify it manually.</p>
20920
20921 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20922 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20923
20924       </div>
20925       <div class="tags">
20926
20927
20928         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>.
20929
20930
20931       </div>
20932     </div>
20933     <div class="padding"></div>
20934
20935     <div class="entry">
20936       <div class="title">
20937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20938       </div>
20939       <div class="date">
20940         28th June 2010
20941       </div>
20942       <div class="body">
20943         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
20944 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
20945 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
20946 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
20947 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
20948 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
20949 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
20950 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
20951 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
20952 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
20953
20954 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
20955 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
20956 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
20957 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
20958 released.</p>
20959
20960 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
20961 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
20962 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
20963 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
20964
20965 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
20966 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20967
20968 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
20969 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
20970 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
20971 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
20972 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
20973
20974       </div>
20975       <div class="tags">
20976
20977
20978         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>.
20979
20980
20981       </div>
20982     </div>
20983     <div class="padding"></div>
20984
20985     <div class="entry">
20986       <div class="title">
20987         <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>
20988       </div>
20989       <div class="date">
20990         24th June 2010
20991       </div>
20992       <div class="body">
20993         <p>A while back, I
20994 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
20995 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
20996 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
20997 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
20998
20999 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21000 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21001 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21002 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21003
21004 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21005 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21006 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21007 Debian Edu.</p>
21008
21009 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21010 the
21011 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21012 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21013 available today from IETF.</p>
21014
21015 <pre>
21016 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21017 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21018 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21019  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21020         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21021         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21022 -       SUP top
21023 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21024         MUST cn
21025         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21026         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21027 </pre>
21028
21029 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21030 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21031 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21032
21033 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21034 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21035
21036       </div>
21037       <div class="tags">
21038
21039
21040         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>.
21041
21042
21043       </div>
21044     </div>
21045     <div class="padding"></div>
21046
21047     <div class="entry">
21048       <div class="title">
21049         <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>
21050       </div>
21051       <div class="date">
21052         16th June 2010
21053       </div>
21054       <div class="body">
21055         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21056 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21057 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21058 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21059 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21060 this:
21061
21062 <blockquote><pre>
21063 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21064 tasksel --new-install
21065 </pre></blockquote>
21066
21067 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21068 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21069 any output what so ever.
21070
21071 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21072 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21073 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21074 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21075 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21076 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21077 code like this:
21078
21079 <blockquote><pre>
21080 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21081 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21082 $cmd
21083 </pre></blockquote>
21084
21085 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21086 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21087 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21088 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21089 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21090 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21091 installation.</p>
21092
21093 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21094 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21095 like this.</p>
21096
21097       </div>
21098       <div class="tags">
21099
21100
21101         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>.
21102
21103
21104       </div>
21105     </div>
21106     <div class="padding"></div>
21107
21108     <div class="entry">
21109       <div class="title">
21110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21111       </div>
21112       <div class="date">
21113         13th June 2010
21114       </div>
21115       <div class="body">
21116         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21117 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21118 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21119 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21120 pages.</p>
21121
21122 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21123 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21124 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21125 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21126 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21127 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21128 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21129 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21130 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21131 see how the project is doing.</p>
21132
21133 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21134 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21135 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21136 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21137 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21138
21139       </div>
21140       <div class="tags">
21141
21142
21143         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>.
21144
21145
21146       </div>
21147     </div>
21148     <div class="padding"></div>
21149
21150     <div class="entry">
21151       <div class="title">
21152         <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>
21153       </div>
21154       <div class="date">
21155         13th June 2010
21156       </div>
21157       <div class="body">
21158         <p>My
21159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21160 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21161 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21162 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21163 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21164 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21165 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21166
21167 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21168 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21169 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21170 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21171 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21172 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21173 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21174 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21175
21176 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21177 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21178 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21179 too surprising.</p>
21180
21181 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21182 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21183 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21184 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21185 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21186 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21187 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21188 continue.</p>
21189
21190 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21191 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21192   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21193   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21194   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21195   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21196   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21197   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21198   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21199   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21200   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21201   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21202   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21203   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21204   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21205   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21206   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21207   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21208   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21209   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21210   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21211   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21212   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21213   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21214   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21215   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21216   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21217   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21218   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21219   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21220
21221 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21222
21223 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21224   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21225   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21226   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21227   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21228   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21229   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21230   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21231   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21232   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21233   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21234   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21235   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21236   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
21237   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
21238   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
21239   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
21240   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
21241   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
21242   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
21243   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
21244   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
21245   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
21246   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
21247   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21248   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
21249   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
21250   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
21251   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
21252   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21253   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21254   zip</p>
21255
21256 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
21257
21258 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
21259   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
21260   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
21261   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
21262   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
21263   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
21264   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21265   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21266   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21267   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21268   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21269   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21270   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21271   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21272   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21273   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21274   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21275   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21276   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21277   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21278   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21279   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21280   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21281   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21282   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21283   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21284   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21285   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
21286
21287 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
21288 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
21289   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
21290   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
21291   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
21292   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
21293   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
21294   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
21295   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
21296   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
21297   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
21298   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
21299   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
21300   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
21301   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
21302   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
21303   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
21304   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
21305   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
21306   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21307   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
21308   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
21309   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
21310   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
21311   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
21312   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
21313   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
21314   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
21315   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
21316   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
21317   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
21318   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
21319   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
21320   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
21321   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
21322   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21323   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21324   xulrunner-1.9</p>
21325
21326
21327       </div>
21328       <div class="tags">
21329
21330
21331         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>.
21332
21333
21334       </div>
21335     </div>
21336     <div class="padding"></div>
21337
21338     <div class="entry">
21339       <div class="title">
21340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
21341       </div>
21342       <div class="date">
21343         11th June 2010
21344       </div>
21345       <div class="body">
21346         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
21347 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
21348 have been discovered and reported in the process
21349 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
21350 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
21351 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
21352 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
21353 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
21354
21355 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
21356 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
21357 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
21358 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
21359 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
21360 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
21361
21362 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
21363 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
21364 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21365 is created.  The bug report
21366 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
21367 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
21368 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
21369 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
21370 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
21371 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
21372 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
21373 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
21374 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
21375 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
21376 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
21377 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
21378 Debian Squeeze.</p>
21379
21380 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
21381 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
21382 trick:</p>
21383
21384 <blockquote><pre>
21385 #!/bin/sh
21386 set -ex
21387
21388 if [ "$1" ] ; then
21389     desktop=$1
21390 else
21391     desktop=gnome
21392 fi
21393
21394 from=lenny
21395 to=squeeze
21396
21397 exec &lt; /dev/null
21398 unset LANG
21399 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
21400 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
21401 fuser -mv .
21402 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
21403 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21404 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
21405 #!/bin/sh
21406 exit 101
21407 EOF
21408 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
21409 exit_cleanup() {
21410     umount $tmpdir/proc
21411 }
21412 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
21413 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
21414 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
21415
21416 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
21417
21418 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
21419 # to return the correct answers.
21420 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
21421     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
21422
21423 # Include the desktop and laptop task
21424 for test in desktop laptop ; do
21425     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
21426 #!/bin/sh
21427 exit 2
21428 EOF
21429     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
21430 done
21431
21432 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21433 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
21434 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
21435 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
21436
21437 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
21438 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21439 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21440 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
21441 fuser -mv
21442 </pre></blockquote>
21443
21444 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
21445 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
21446 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
21447 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
21448 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
21449 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
21450
21451 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
21452 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
21453 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
21454 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
21455 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
21456 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
21457 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
21458
21459 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
21460 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
21461 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
21462 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
21463 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
21464 packages.</p>
21465
21466       </div>
21467       <div class="tags">
21468
21469
21470         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>.
21471
21472
21473       </div>
21474     </div>
21475     <div class="padding"></div>
21476
21477     <div class="entry">
21478       <div class="title">
21479         <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>
21480       </div>
21481       <div class="date">
21482          6th June 2010
21483       </div>
21484       <div class="body">
21485         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
21486 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
21487 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
21488 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
21489 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
21490 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
21491 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
21492
21493 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
21494 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
21495 COLUMNS):</p>
21496
21497 <blockquote><pre>
21498 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
21499 previous=N
21500 PREVLEVEL=
21501 RUNLEVEL=
21502 runlevel=S
21503 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
21504 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
21505 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
21506 </pre></blockquote>
21507
21508 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
21509 script.</p>
21510
21511 <blockquote><pre>
21512 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
21513 previous=N
21514 PREVLEVEL=N
21515 RUNLEVEL=S
21516 runlevel=S
21517 </pre></blockquote>
21518
21519 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
21520 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
21521 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
21522
21523 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
21524 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
21525 choice.</p>
21526
21527       </div>
21528       <div class="tags">
21529
21530
21531         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>.
21532
21533
21534       </div>
21535     </div>
21536     <div class="padding"></div>
21537
21538     <div class="entry">
21539       <div class="title">
21540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
21541       </div>
21542       <div class="date">
21543          6th June 2010
21544       </div>
21545       <div class="body">
21546         <p>Via the
21547 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
21548 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
21549 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
21550 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
21551 following the standards wars of today.</p>
21552
21553       </div>
21554       <div class="tags">
21555
21556
21557         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>.
21558
21559
21560       </div>
21561     </div>
21562     <div class="padding"></div>
21563
21564     <div class="entry">
21565       <div class="title">
21566         <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>
21567       </div>
21568       <div class="date">
21569          3rd June 2010
21570       </div>
21571       <div class="body">
21572         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
21573 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
21574 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
21575 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
21576 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
21577
21578 <blockquote><pre>
21579 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
21580   vendor                    count
21581   Dell Computer Corporation     1
21582     PowerEdge 1750              1
21583   IBM                           1
21584     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
21585   Intel                         2
21586   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21587 maintainer:~#
21588 </pre></blockquote>
21589
21590 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21591 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21592 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21593 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21594 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21595
21596 <p>A larger list is
21597 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
21598 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
21599 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
21600 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
21601 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
21602 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
21603 collector.</p>
21604
21605       </div>
21606       <div class="tags">
21607
21608
21609         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>.
21610
21611
21612       </div>
21613     </div>
21614     <div class="padding"></div>
21615
21616     <div class="entry">
21617       <div class="title">
21618         <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>
21619       </div>
21620       <div class="date">
21621          1st June 2010
21622       </div>
21623       <div class="body">
21624         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
21625 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
21626 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
21627 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
21628 wait.</p>
21629
21630 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
21631 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
21632 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
21633 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
21634 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
21635 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
21636
21637 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
21638 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
21639 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
21640 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
21641 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
21642 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
21643 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
21644 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
21645
21646 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
21647
21648       </div>
21649       <div class="tags">
21650
21651
21652         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>.
21653
21654
21655       </div>
21656     </div>
21657     <div class="padding"></div>
21658
21659     <div class="entry">
21660       <div class="title">
21661         <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>
21662       </div>
21663       <div class="date">
21664         27th May 2010
21665       </div>
21666       <div class="body">
21667         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
21668 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
21669 issues are known and should be solved:
21670
21671 <p><ul>
21672
21673 <li>The wicd package seen to
21674 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
21675 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
21676 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
21677 seem to be on the case.</li>
21678
21679 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
21680 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
21681 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
21682 maintainer is on the case.</li>
21683
21684 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
21685 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
21686 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
21687 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
21688 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
21689 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
21690 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
21691 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
21692
21693 </ul></p>
21694
21695 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
21696 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
21697 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
21698 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
21699
21700 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21701 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21702 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21703 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21704
21705 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
21706
21707       </div>
21708       <div class="tags">
21709
21710
21711         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>.
21712
21713
21714       </div>
21715     </div>
21716     <div class="padding"></div>
21717
21718     <div class="entry">
21719       <div class="title">
21720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
21721       </div>
21722       <div class="date">
21723         22nd May 2010
21724       </div>
21725       <div class="body">
21726         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
21727 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
21728 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
21729 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
21730
21731 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
21732 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
21733 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
21734 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
21735 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
21736 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
21737 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
21738 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
21739 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
21740 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
21741 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
21742 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
21743 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
21744 going to work.</p>
21745
21746 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
21747 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
21748 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
21749 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
21750 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
21751 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
21752 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
21753 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
21754 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
21755 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
21756 Edu.</p>
21757
21758 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
21759 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
21760 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
21761 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
21762 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
21763 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
21764
21765 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
21766 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
21767
21768       </div>
21769       <div class="tags">
21770
21771
21772         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>.
21773
21774
21775       </div>
21776     </div>
21777     <div class="padding"></div>
21778
21779     <div class="entry">
21780       <div class="title">
21781         <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>
21782       </div>
21783       <div class="date">
21784         19th May 2010
21785       </div>
21786       <div class="body">
21787         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
21788 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
21789 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
21790 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
21791 into unstable.  The
21792 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
21793 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
21794 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
21795 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
21796 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
21797 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
21798 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
21799
21800 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
21801 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
21802 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
21803 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
21804 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
21805 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
21806 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
21807 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
21808
21809 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
21810 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
21811 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
21812 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
21813 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
21814 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
21815 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
21816
21817 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
21818 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
21819 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
21820 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
21821 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
21822 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
21823 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
21824 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
21825 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
21826 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
21827 on the home directory servers.</p>
21828
21829 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
21830 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
21831 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
21832 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
21833 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
21834 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
21835
21836 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21837 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21838
21839       </div>
21840       <div class="tags">
21841
21842
21843         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>.
21844
21845
21846       </div>
21847     </div>
21848     <div class="padding"></div>
21849
21850     <div class="entry">
21851       <div class="title">
21852         <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>
21853       </div>
21854       <div class="date">
21855         14th May 2010
21856       </div>
21857       <div class="body">
21858         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
21859 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
21860 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
21861 expected, if I am to believe the
21862 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21863 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
21864 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
21865 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
21866 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
21867 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
21868 version.</p>
21869
21870 More information about
21871 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21872 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
21873 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
21874 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
21875
21876 <blockquote><pre>
21877 CONCURRENCY=none
21878 </pre></blockquote>
21879
21880 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21881 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21882 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21883 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21884
21885       </div>
21886       <div class="tags">
21887
21888
21889         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>.
21890
21891
21892       </div>
21893     </div>
21894     <div class="padding"></div>
21895
21896     <div class="entry">
21897       <div class="title">
21898         <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>
21899       </div>
21900       <div class="date">
21901         14th May 2010
21902       </div>
21903       <div class="body">
21904         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
21905 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
21906 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
21907 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
21908 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
21909 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
21910 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
21911 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
21912
21913 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
21914 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
21915 this on the collector host:</p>
21916
21917 <blockquote><pre>
21918 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
21919 </pre></blockquote>
21920
21921 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
21922 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
21923
21924 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
21925 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
21926 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
21927 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
21928 written yet.</p>
21929
21930       </div>
21931       <div class="tags">
21932
21933
21934         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>.
21935
21936
21937       </div>
21938     </div>
21939     <div class="padding"></div>
21940
21941     <div class="entry">
21942       <div class="title">
21943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
21944       </div>
21945       <div class="date">
21946         13th May 2010
21947       </div>
21948       <div class="body">
21949         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
21950 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
21951 has been
21952 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
21953
21954 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
21955 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
21956 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
21957 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
21958 based boot system.  Tollef is
21959 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
21960 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
21961 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
21962 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
21963 at the moment do not.</p>
21964
21965 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
21966 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
21967 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
21968 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
21969 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
21970 way forward.</p>
21971
21972 <p>In the mean time, based on the
21973 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21974 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
21975 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
21976 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
21977 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
21978 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
21979 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
21980 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
21981
21982       </div>
21983       <div class="tags">
21984
21985
21986         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>.
21987
21988
21989       </div>
21990     </div>
21991     <div class="padding"></div>
21992
21993     <div class="entry">
21994       <div class="title">
21995         <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>
21996       </div>
21997       <div class="date">
21998          6th May 2010
21999       </div>
22000       <div class="body">
22001         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22002 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22003 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22004 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22005 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22006 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22007 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22008
22009 <blockquote><pre>
22010 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22011 </pre></blockquote>
22012
22013 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22014 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22015 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22016 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22017 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22018 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22019 make this happen.</p>
22020
22021 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22022 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22023 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22024 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22025 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22026
22027 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22028 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22029 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22030 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22031
22032 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22033 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22034 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22035 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22036
22037       </div>
22038       <div class="tags">
22039
22040
22041         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>.
22042
22043
22044       </div>
22045     </div>
22046     <div class="padding"></div>
22047
22048     <div class="entry">
22049       <div class="title">
22050         <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>
22051       </div>
22052       <div class="date">
22053          2nd May 2010
22054       </div>
22055       <div class="body">
22056         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22057 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22058 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22059
22060 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22061 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22062 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22063 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22064 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22065
22066 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22067 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22068
22069 <blockquote><pre>
22070 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22071 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22072 Password expires                                        : never
22073 Password inactive                                       : never
22074 Account expires                                         : never
22075 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22076 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22077 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22078 root@tjener:~#
22079 </pre></blockquote>
22080
22081 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22082 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22083 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22084 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22085 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22086 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22087
22088 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22089 intended:</p>
22090
22091 <blockquote><pre>
22092 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22093 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22094 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22095 Password expires                                        : never
22096 Password inactive                                       : never
22097 Account expires                                         : never
22098 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22099 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22100 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22101 root@tjener:~#
22102 </pre></blockquote>
22103
22104 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22105 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22106 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22107
22108 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22109 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22110
22111 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22112 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22113
22114 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22115 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22116 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22117 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22118 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22119 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22120 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22121
22122 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22123 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22124 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22125 change.</p>
22126
22127       </div>
22128       <div class="tags">
22129
22130
22131         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>.
22132
22133
22134       </div>
22135     </div>
22136     <div class="padding"></div>
22137
22138     <div class="entry">
22139       <div class="title">
22140         <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>
22141       </div>
22142       <div class="date">
22143         28th April 2010
22144       </div>
22145       <div class="body">
22146         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22147 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22148 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22149 and go.</p>
22150
22151 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22152 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22153 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22154 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22155
22156 <ul>
22157
22158  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22159    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22160    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22161    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22162    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22163    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22164    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22165    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22166    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22167    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22168    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22169    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22170
22171  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22172    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22173    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22174    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22175    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22176    or the Fedora developed
22177    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22178    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22179
22180  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22181    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22182    directory, using unison.</li>
22183
22184  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22185    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22186    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22187    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22188    implemented.</li>
22189
22190  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22191    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22192
22193  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22194    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22195    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22196
22197 </ul>
22198
22199 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22200 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22201 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22202 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22203 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22204 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22205 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22206 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22207 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22208
22209 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22210 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22211
22212       </div>
22213       <div class="tags">
22214
22215
22216         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>.
22217
22218
22219       </div>
22220     </div>
22221     <div class="padding"></div>
22222
22223     <div class="entry">
22224       <div class="title">
22225         <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>
22226       </div>
22227       <div class="date">
22228         19th April 2010
22229       </div>
22230       <div class="body">
22231         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22232 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22233 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22234 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22235 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
22236 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
22237 restrictions on the web, for example from
22238 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
22239 epub-version from
22240 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
22241 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
22242 strongly recommend this book.</p>
22243
22244       </div>
22245       <div class="tags">
22246
22247
22248         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>.
22249
22250
22251       </div>
22252     </div>
22253     <div class="padding"></div>
22254
22255     <div class="entry">
22256       <div class="title">
22257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
22258       </div>
22259       <div class="date">
22260         14th April 2010
22261       </div>
22262       <div class="body">
22263         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
22264 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
22265 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
22266 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
22267 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
22268 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
22269 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
22270 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
22271 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
22272
22273 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
22274 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
22275 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
22276 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
22277 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
22278
22279 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
22280 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
22281
22282 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
22283 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
22284 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
22285 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
22286 to work properly.</p>
22287
22288 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
22289 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
22290 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
22291 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
22292 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
22293 time.</p>
22294
22295 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
22296 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
22297 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
22298 up in a few days.</p>
22299
22300       </div>
22301       <div class="tags">
22302
22303
22304         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>.
22305
22306
22307       </div>
22308     </div>
22309     <div class="padding"></div>
22310
22311     <div class="entry">
22312       <div class="title">
22313         <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>
22314       </div>
22315       <div class="date">
22316          6th March 2010
22317       </div>
22318       <div class="body">
22319         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
22320 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
22321 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
22322 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
22323 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
22324 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
22325
22326 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
22327 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
22328 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
22329 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
22330
22331 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
22332 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
22333 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
22334 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
22335 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
22336 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
22337
22338       </div>
22339       <div class="tags">
22340
22341
22342         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>.
22343
22344
22345       </div>
22346     </div>
22347     <div class="padding"></div>
22348
22349     <div class="entry">
22350       <div class="title">
22351         <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>
22352       </div>
22353       <div class="date">
22354         11th February 2010
22355       </div>
22356       <div class="body">
22357         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
22358 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
22359 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
22360 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
22361 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
22362 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
22363 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
22364
22365 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
22366
22367 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
22368 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
22369 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
22370 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
22371
22372       </div>
22373       <div class="tags">
22374
22375
22376         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>.
22377
22378
22379       </div>
22380     </div>
22381     <div class="padding"></div>
22382
22383     <div class="entry">
22384       <div class="title">
22385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
22386       </div>
22387       <div class="date">
22388         27th January 2010
22389       </div>
22390       <div class="body">
22391         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
22392 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
22393 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
22394 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
22395 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
22396 further.</p>
22397
22398 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
22399 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
22400 configured to be a server for the
22401 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
22402 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
22403 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
22404 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
22405 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
22406 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
22407 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
22408 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
22409 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
22410 and Nagios configuration.</p>
22411
22412 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
22413 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
22414 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
22415 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
22416
22417 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
22418 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
22419 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
22420 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
22421 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
22422 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
22423 the machine.</p>
22424
22425 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
22426 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
22427 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
22428 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
22429
22430 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
22431 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
22432 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
22433 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
22434 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
22435 everything is taken care of.</p>
22436
22437       </div>
22438       <div class="tags">
22439
22440
22441         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>.
22442
22443
22444       </div>
22445     </div>
22446     <div class="padding"></div>
22447
22448     <div class="entry">
22449       <div class="title">
22450         <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>
22451       </div>
22452       <div class="date">
22453         12th August 2009
22454       </div>
22455       <div class="body">
22456         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
22457 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
22458 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
22459 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
22460
22461 <table>
22462 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22463 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22464 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
22465 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
22466 </table>
22467
22468 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
22469 got these numbers:</p>
22470
22471 <table>
22472 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22473 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
22474 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
22475 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
22476 </table>
22477
22478 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
22479
22480 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
22481 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
22482 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
22483 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
22484 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
22485
22486
22487 <table>
22488 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22489 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22490 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
22491 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
22492 </table>
22493
22494 <p>And with 'site:no':
22495
22496 <table>
22497 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22498 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
22499 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
22500 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
22501 </table>
22502
22503 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
22504 numbers.</p>
22505
22506       </div>
22507       <div class="tags">
22508
22509
22510         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>.
22511
22512
22513       </div>
22514     </div>
22515     <div class="padding"></div>
22516
22517     <div class="entry">
22518       <div class="title">
22519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
22520       </div>
22521       <div class="date">
22522          8th August 2009
22523       </div>
22524       <div class="body">
22525         <p>According to <a
22526 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
22527 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
22528 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
22529 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
22530 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
22531 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
22532 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
22533 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
22534 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
22535 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
22536
22537 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
22538 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
22539 seminar this autumn.</p>
22540
22541       </div>
22542       <div class="tags">
22543
22544
22545         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>.
22546
22547
22548       </div>
22549     </div>
22550     <div class="padding"></div>
22551
22552     <div class="entry">
22553       <div class="title">
22554         <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>
22555       </div>
22556       <div class="date">
22557         27th July 2009
22558       </div>
22559       <div class="body">
22560         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
22561 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
22562 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
22563 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
22564 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
22565 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
22566 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
22567
22568 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
22569 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
22570 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
22571
22572       </div>
22573       <div class="tags">
22574
22575
22576         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>.
22577
22578
22579       </div>
22580     </div>
22581     <div class="padding"></div>
22582
22583     <div class="entry">
22584       <div class="title">
22585         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
22586       </div>
22587       <div class="date">
22588         22nd July 2009
22589       </div>
22590       <div class="body">
22591         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22592 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22593 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22594 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22595 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22596 the package up to date.</p>
22597
22598 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
22599 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
22600 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
22601 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
22602 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
22603 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
22604 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
22605 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
22606 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
22607 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
22608 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
22609 working on the future release.</p>
22610
22611 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
22612 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
22613
22614       </div>
22615       <div class="tags">
22616
22617
22618         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>.
22619
22620
22621       </div>
22622     </div>
22623     <div class="padding"></div>
22624
22625     <div class="entry">
22626       <div class="title">
22627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
22628       </div>
22629       <div class="date">
22630         24th June 2009
22631       </div>
22632       <div class="body">
22633         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
22634 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
22635 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
22636 funded
22637 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
22638 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
22639 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
22640 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
22641 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
22642 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
22643
22644 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
22645 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
22646 boot:</p>
22647
22648 <ul>
22649
22650 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
22651
22652 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
22653    clock is in UTC.</li>
22654
22655 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
22656    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22657    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
22658
22659 </ul>
22660
22661 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
22662 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
22663 Villegas</a>.
22664
22665 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
22666 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
22667 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
22668 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
22669 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
22670 using this.</p>
22671
22672 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
22673 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
22674 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
22675 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
22676 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
22677 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
22678 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
22679
22680       </div>
22681       <div class="tags">
22682
22683
22684         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>.
22685
22686
22687       </div>
22688     </div>
22689     <div class="padding"></div>
22690
22691     <div class="entry">
22692       <div class="title">
22693         <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>
22694       </div>
22695       <div class="date">
22696          2nd May 2009
22697       </div>
22698       <div class="body">
22699         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
22700 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
22701 do not yet know them.</p>
22702
22703 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
22704 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
22705 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
22706 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
22707 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
22708 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
22709 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
22710 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
22711 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
22712 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
22713 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
22714
22715 <p>The second one is
22716 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
22717 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
22718 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
22719 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
22720 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
22721 and the company behind it is running
22722 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
22723 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
22724 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
22725 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
22726 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
22727 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
22728 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
22729 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
22730
22731 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
22732 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
22733 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
22734 surrounded by today.</p>
22735
22736       </div>
22737       <div class="tags">
22738
22739
22740         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>.
22741
22742
22743       </div>
22744     </div>
22745     <div class="padding"></div>
22746
22747     <div class="entry">
22748       <div class="title">
22749         <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>
22750       </div>
22751       <div class="date">
22752         28th April 2009
22753       </div>
22754       <div class="body">
22755         <p>Julien Blache
22756 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
22757 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
22758 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
22759 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
22760 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
22761 properties.</p>
22762
22763       </div>
22764       <div class="tags">
22765
22766
22767         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>.
22768
22769
22770       </div>
22771     </div>
22772     <div class="padding"></div>
22773
22774     <div class="entry">
22775       <div class="title">
22776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
22777       </div>
22778       <div class="date">
22779          5th April 2009
22780       </div>
22781       <div class="body">
22782         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
22783 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
22784 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
22785 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
22786 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
22787 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
22788 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
22789 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
22790
22791 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
22792 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
22793 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
22794   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
22795   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
22796
22797 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
22798 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
22799 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
22800 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
22801
22802 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
22803 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
22804 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
22805 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
22806
22807 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
22808 set -e
22809 URL="$1"
22810 SAVEFILE="$2"
22811 DURATION="$3"
22812 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
22813   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
22814   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
22815 pid=$!
22816 sleep $DURATION
22817 kill $pid
22818 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
22819
22820       </div>
22821       <div class="tags">
22822
22823
22824         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>.
22825
22826
22827       </div>
22828     </div>
22829     <div class="padding"></div>
22830
22831     <div class="entry">
22832       <div class="title">
22833         <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>
22834       </div>
22835       <div class="date">
22836         30th March 2009
22837       </div>
22838       <div class="body">
22839         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
22840 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
22841 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
22842 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
22843 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
22844 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
22845 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
22846 application.</p>
22847
22848 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
22849 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
22850 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
22851 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
22852 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
22853 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
22854 blocked from doing so.</p>
22855
22856 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
22857 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
22858 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
22859 requirements change.</p>
22860
22861 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
22862 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
22863 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
22864
22865       </div>
22866       <div class="tags">
22867
22868
22869         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>.
22870
22871
22872       </div>
22873     </div>
22874     <div class="padding"></div>
22875
22876     <div class="entry">
22877       <div class="title">
22878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
22879       </div>
22880       <div class="date">
22881         29th March 2009
22882       </div>
22883       <div class="body">
22884         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
22885 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
22886 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
22887 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
22888 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
22889 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
22890 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
22891 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
22892 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
22893 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
22894 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
22895 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
22896 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
22897 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
22898 now. :)</p>
22899
22900       </div>
22901       <div class="tags">
22902
22903
22904         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>.
22905
22906
22907       </div>
22908     </div>
22909     <div class="padding"></div>
22910
22911     <div class="entry">
22912       <div class="title">
22913         <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>
22914       </div>
22915       <div class="date">
22916         29th March 2009
22917       </div>
22918       <div class="body">
22919         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
22920 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
22921 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
22922 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
22923 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
22924 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
22925
22926 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
22927 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
22928 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
22929 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
22930 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
22931 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
22932 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
22933 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
22934 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
22935 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
22936 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
22937 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
22938 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
22939
22940 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
22941 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
22942 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
22943 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
22944
22945 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
22946 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
22947
22948 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
22949 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
22950 new IETF work group?</p>
22951
22952       </div>
22953       <div class="tags">
22954
22955
22956         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>.
22957
22958
22959       </div>
22960     </div>
22961     <div class="padding"></div>
22962
22963     <div class="entry">
22964       <div class="title">
22965         <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>
22966       </div>
22967       <div class="date">
22968         28th February 2009
22969       </div>
22970       <div class="body">
22971         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
22972 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
22973 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
22974 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
22975 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
22976 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
22977 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
22978 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
22979 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
22980 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
22981 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
22982 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
22983 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
22984 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
22985 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
22986 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
22987 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
22988 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
22989 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
22990 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
22991 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
22992 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
22993 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
22994 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
22995 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
22996 machine.</p>
22997
22998 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
22999 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23000 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23001 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23002 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23003 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23004 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23005
23006 <pre>
23007 use LWP::Simple;
23008 use POSIX;
23009 use WWW::Mechanize;
23010 use Date::Parse;
23011 [...]
23012 sub get_support_info {
23013     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23014     my $str;
23015
23016     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23017         # fetch website from Dell support
23018         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";
23019         my $webpage = get($url);
23020         return undef unless ($webpage);
23021
23022         my $daysleft = -1;
23023         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23024         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23025             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23026             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23027             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23028
23029             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23030             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23031             my $lastend = "";
23032             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23033                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23034
23035                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23036                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23037                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23038                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23039                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23040                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23041                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23042             }
23043             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23044             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23045                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23046         }
23047     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23048         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23049         my $url =
23050             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23051         $mech->get($url);
23052         my $fields = {
23053             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23054             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23055             'country' => 'NO',
23056             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23057             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23058         };
23059         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23060                             fields      => $fields );
23061         # Next step is screen scraping
23062         my $content = $mech->content();
23063
23064         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23065         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23066         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23067         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23068
23069         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23070
23071         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23072             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23073                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23074             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23075             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23076                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23077             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23078                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23079
23080             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23081
23082             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23083                 if ($end lt $today);
23084         }
23085     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23086         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23087         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23088         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23089             my $content =
23090                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23091             if ($content) {
23092                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23093                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23094                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23095                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23096
23097                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23098                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23099
23100                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23101
23102                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23103                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23104                     if ($end lt $today);
23105             }
23106         }
23107     }
23108     return $str;
23109 }
23110 </pre>
23111
23112 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23113 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23114 from dmidecode.</p>
23115
23116 <pre>
23117 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23118                        "447707-B21");
23119 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23120 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23121                        "1234567");
23122 </pre>
23123
23124 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23125 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23126
23127 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23128 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23129 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23130 do so.</p>
23131
23132       </div>
23133       <div class="tags">
23134
23135
23136         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>.
23137
23138
23139       </div>
23140     </div>
23141     <div class="padding"></div>
23142
23143     <div class="entry">
23144       <div class="title">
23145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23146       </div>
23147       <div class="date">
23148         20th February 2009
23149       </div>
23150       <div class="body">
23151         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23152 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23153 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23154 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23155 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23156 the "missing" computer.</p>
23157
23158 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23159 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23160 code blocks as defined in the
23161 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23162 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23163 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23164 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23165 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23166 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23167 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23168 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23169 codes.</p>
23170
23171 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23172 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23173 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23174 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23175 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23176 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23177
23178 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23179 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23180 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23181 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23182 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23183 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23184 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23185 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23186 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23187 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23188
23189 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23190 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23191 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23192
23193       </div>
23194       <div class="tags">
23195
23196
23197         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>.
23198
23199
23200       </div>
23201     </div>
23202     <div class="padding"></div>
23203
23204     <div class="entry">
23205       <div class="title">
23206         <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>
23207       </div>
23208       <div class="date">
23209         17th January 2009
23210       </div>
23211       <div class="body">
23212         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23213 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23214 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23215 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23216 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23217 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23218 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23219 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23220 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23221 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23222 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23223 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23224 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23225 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23226
23227 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23228 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23229 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23230 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23231 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23232 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23233 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23234 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23235 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
23236 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
23237 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
23238 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
23239 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
23240 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
23241 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
23242 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
23243 playing when the download is done.</p>
23244
23245 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
23246 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
23247 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
23248 too.</p>
23249
23250 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
23251 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
23252 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
23253 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
23254
23255       </div>
23256       <div class="tags">
23257
23258
23259         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
23260
23261
23262       </div>
23263     </div>
23264     <div class="padding"></div>
23265
23266     <div class="entry">
23267       <div class="title">
23268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
23269       </div>
23270       <div class="date">
23271         28th December 2008
23272       </div>
23273       <div class="body">
23274         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
23275 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
23276 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
23277 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
23278 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
23279 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
23280 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
23281 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
23282 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
23283 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
23284 source, sink and mixer applications and
23285 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
23286 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
23287 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
23288 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
23289 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
23290 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
23291 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
23292 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
23293 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
23294
23295 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
23296 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
23297 larger stick as well.</p>
23298
23299       </div>
23300       <div class="tags">
23301
23302
23303         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>.
23304
23305
23306       </div>
23307     </div>
23308     <div class="padding"></div>
23309
23310     <div class="entry">
23311       <div class="title">
23312         <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>
23313       </div>
23314       <div class="date">
23315          7th December 2008
23316       </div>
23317       <div class="body">
23318         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
23319 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
23320 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
23321 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
23322 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
23323 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
23324 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
23325 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
23326
23327 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
23328 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
23329 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
23330 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
23331 of these cards.</p>
23332
23333       </div>
23334       <div class="tags">
23335
23336
23337         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>.
23338
23339
23340       </div>
23341     </div>
23342     <div class="padding"></div>
23343
23344     <div class="entry">
23345       <div class="title">
23346         <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>
23347       </div>
23348       <div class="date">
23349         25th November 2008
23350       </div>
23351       <div class="body">
23352         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
23353 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
23354 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
23355 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
23356 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
23357 notes are available on
23358 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
23359 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
23360 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
23361 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
23362 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
23363 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
23364 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
23365 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
23366 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
23367
23368 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
23369 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
23370
23371       </div>
23372       <div class="tags">
23373
23374
23375         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>.
23376
23377
23378       </div>
23379     </div>
23380     <div class="padding"></div>
23381
23382     <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>
23383     <div id="sidebar">
23384
23385
23386
23387 <h2>Archive</h2>
23388 <ul>
23389
23390 <li>2015
23391 <ul>
23392
23393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23394
23395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23396
23397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
23398
23399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
23400
23401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23402
23403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
23404
23405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
23406
23407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23408
23409 </ul></li>
23410
23411 <li>2014
23412 <ul>
23413
23414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23415
23416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
23417
23418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
23419
23420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23421
23422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
23423
23424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23425
23426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
23427
23428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23429
23430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23431
23432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
23433
23434 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23435
23436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
23437
23438 </ul></li>
23439
23440 <li>2013
23441 <ul>
23442
23443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
23444
23445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
23446
23447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
23448
23449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
23450
23451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23452
23453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
23454
23455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23456
23457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23458
23459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23460
23461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23462
23463 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
23464
23465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23466
23467 </ul></li>
23468
23469 <li>2012
23470 <ul>
23471
23472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23473
23474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
23475
23476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
23477
23478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
23479
23480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
23481
23482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
23483
23484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
23485
23486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23487
23488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
23489
23490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
23491
23492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
23493
23494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23495
23496 </ul></li>
23497
23498 <li>2011
23499 <ul>
23500
23501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
23502
23503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23504
23505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
23506
23507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23508
23509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23510
23511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23512
23513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23514
23515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23516
23517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
23518
23519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23520
23521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23522
23523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
23524
23525 </ul></li>
23526
23527 <li>2010
23528 <ul>
23529
23530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23531
23532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
23533
23534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
23535
23536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
23537
23538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23539
23540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
23541
23542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
23543
23544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
23545
23546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
23547
23548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
23549
23550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
23551
23552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
23553
23554 </ul></li>
23555
23556 <li>2009
23557 <ul>
23558
23559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
23560
23561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
23562
23563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
23564
23565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
23566
23567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23568
23569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
23570
23571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
23572
23573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23574
23575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
23576
23577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23578
23579 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23580
23581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23582
23583 </ul></li>
23584
23585 <li>2008
23586 <ul>
23587
23588 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23589
23590 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23591
23592 </ul></li>
23593
23594 </ul>
23595
23596
23597
23598 <h2>Tags</h2>
23599 <ul>
23600
23601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
23602
23603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
23604
23605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
23606
23607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
23608
23609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
23610
23611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
23612
23613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
23614
23615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
23616
23617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (111)</a></li>
23618
23619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
23620
23621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
23622
23623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
23624
23625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (16)</a></li>
23626
23627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
23628
23629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (286)</a></li>
23630
23631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
23632
23633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
23634
23635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (18)</a></li>
23636
23637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
23638
23639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
23640
23641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
23642
23643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
23644
23645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
23646
23647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
23648
23649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
23650
23651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
23652
23653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
23654
23655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
23656
23657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
23658
23659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
23660
23661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (264)</a></li>
23662
23663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
23664
23665  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (19)</a></li>
23666
23667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
23668
23669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (53)</a></li>
23670
23671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
23672
23673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
23674
23675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
23676
23677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
23678
23679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
23680
23681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
23682
23683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
23684
23685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
23686
23687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
23688
23689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
23690
23691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
23692
23693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
23694
23695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
23696
23697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
23698
23699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
23700
23701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
23702
23703  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
23704
23705  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
23706
23707  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
23708
23709  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
23710
23711  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
23712
23713  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
23714
23715 </ul>
23716
23717
23718     </div>
23719     <p style="text-align: right">
23720  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
23721 </p>
23722
23723   </body>
23724 </html>