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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         15th January 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
  32 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
  33 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
  34 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
  35 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
  36 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
  37 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
  38 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
  39 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
  40 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
  41 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
  42 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
  43 was not the first to propose this, as the
  44 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
  45 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
  46 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
  47 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
  48
  49 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
  50 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
  51 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
  52 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
  53 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
  54
  55 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
  56 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
  57 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
  58 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
  59 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
  60 done in /etc/.</p>
  61
  62 <blockquote><pre>
  63 apt install apt-transport-tor
  64 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/%tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
  65 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
  66 </pre></blockquote>
  67
  68 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
  69 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
  70 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
  71 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
  72
  73 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
  74 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
  75 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
  76 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
  77 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
  78 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
  79
  80 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
  81 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
  82 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
  83 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
  84 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
  85
  86 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
  87 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
  88 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
  89 system.</p>
  90
  91       </div>
  92       <div class="tags">
  93
  94
  95         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>.
  96
  97
  98       </div>
  99     </div>
 100     <div class="padding"></div>
 101
 102     <div class="entry">
 103       <div class="title">
 104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
 105       </div>
 106       <div class="date">
 107         23rd December 2015
 108       </div>
 109       <div class="body">
 110         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 111 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 112 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 113 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 114 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 115 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 116
 117 <p>A few days I came across
 118 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 119 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 120 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 121 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 122 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 123 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 124 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 125 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 126 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 127 discovered the developer
 128 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 129 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 130 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 131 archive.</p>
 132
 133 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 134 it into Debian, where it currently
 135 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 136 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 137
 138 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 139 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 140 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 141 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 142 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 143 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 144 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 145 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 146 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 147 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 148 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 149 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 150
 151 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 152 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 153 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 154 package show up in unstable.</p>
 155
 156       </div>
 157       <div class="tags">
 158
 159
 160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 161
 162
 163       </div>
 164     </div>
 165     <div class="padding"></div>
 166
 167     <div class="entry">
 168       <div class="title">
 169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
 170       </div>
 171       <div class="date">
 172         20th December 2015
 173       </div>
 174       <div class="body">
 175         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 176 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 177 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 178 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 179 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 180 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 181 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 182 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 183 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 184 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 185 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 186 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 187 with.</p>
 188
 189 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 190 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 191 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 192 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 193 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 194 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 195 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 196 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 197 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 198 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 199 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 200
 201 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 202 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 203 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 204 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 205 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 206 how do add the required
 207 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 208 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 209 this content:</p>
 210
 211 <blockquote><pre>
 212 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 213 &lt;component&gt;
 214   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 215   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 216   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 217   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 218   &lt;description&gt;
 219     &lt;p&gt;
 220       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 221       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 222       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 223       launcher.
 224     &lt;/p&gt;
 225   &lt;/description&gt;
 226   &lt;provides&gt;
 227     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 228   &lt;/provides&gt;
 229 &lt;/component&gt;
 230 </pre></blockquote>
 231
 232 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 233 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 234 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 235 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 236 0202.</p>
 237
 238 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 239 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 240 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 241 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 242 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 243 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 244 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 245 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 246
 247 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 248 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 249 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 250 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 251 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 252
 253 <blockquote><pre>
 254 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 255 </pre></blockquote>
 256
 257 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 258 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 259 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 260 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 261 question.</p>
 262
 263 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 264 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 265
 266 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 267 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 268
 269 <blockquote><pre>
 270 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 271 </pre></blockquote>
 272
 273 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 274 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 275 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 276
 277       </div>
 278       <div class="tags">
 279
 280
 281         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>.
 282
 283
 284       </div>
 285     </div>
 286     <div class="padding"></div>
 287
 288     <div class="entry">
 289       <div class="title">
 290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
 291       </div>
 292       <div class="date">
 293         30th November 2015
 294       </div>
 295       <div class="body">
 296         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 297 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 298 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 299 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 300 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 301
 302 <blockquote>
 303
 304 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
 305
 306 <blockquote>
 307 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 308
 309 The first step is to choose a
 310 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 311 code.<br/>
 312
 313 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 314 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 315
 316 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 317 work<br/>
 318
 319 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 320 </blockquote>
 321
 322 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 323 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 324 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 325 0x57</a></small></p>
 326
 327 <p>As the Debian Website
 328 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 329 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 330 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 331 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 332 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 333 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 334 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 335 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 336 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 337 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 338 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 339 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 340 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 341 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 342 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 343 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 344 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 345 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 346 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 347 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 348 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 349 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 350 In March the SFC supported a
 351 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 352 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 353 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 354 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 355 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 356 conferences
 357 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 358 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 359 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 360 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 361 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 362 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 363 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 364 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 365 Software.</p>
 366
 367 <p>If you support Free Software,
 368 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 369 what the SFC do, agree with their
 370 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 371 principles</a>, are happy about their
 372 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 373 work on a project that is an SFC
 374 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 375 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 376 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 377 Allan Webber</a>,
 378 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 379 Smith</a>,
 380 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 381 Bacon</a>, myself and
 382 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 383 becoming a
 384 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 385 next week your donation will be
 386 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 387 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 388 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 389 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 390 social media accounts.</p>
 391
 392 </blockquote>
 393
 394 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 395 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 396 supporter too?</p>
 397
 398       </div>
 399       <div class="tags">
 400
 401
 402         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 403
 404
 405       </div>
 406     </div>
 407     <div class="padding"></div>
 408
 409     <div class="entry">
 410       <div class="title">
 411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 412       </div>
 413       <div class="date">
 414         17th November 2015
 415       </div>
 416       <div class="body">
 417         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 418 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 419 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 420 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 421 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 422 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 423 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 425 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 426 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 427
 428 <pre>
 429 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 430       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 431 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 432 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 433 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 434 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 435 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 436 </pre>
 437
 438 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 439 my old key.</p>
 440
 441 <p>If you signed my old key
 442 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 443 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 444 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 445 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 446
 447       </div>
 448       <div class="tags">
 449
 450
 451         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>.
 452
 453
 454       </div>
 455     </div>
 456     <div class="padding"></div>
 457
 458     <div class="entry">
 459       <div class="title">
 460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 461       </div>
 462       <div class="date">
 463         24th September 2015
 464       </div>
 465       <div class="body">
 466         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 467 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 468 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 469 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 470 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 471 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 472 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 473
 474 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 475
 476 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 477 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 478 by someone else.  I found
 479 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 480 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 481 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 482 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 483 from him.  Via
 484 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 485 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 486 discovered
 487 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 488 available in Debian.</p>
 489
 490 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 491 battery stats ever since. Now my
 492 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 493 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 494 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 495 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 496
 497 <pre>
 498 #!/bin/sh
 499 # Inspired by
 500 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 501 # See also
 502 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 503 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 504
 505 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 506     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 507
 508 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 509     (
 510         printf "timestamp,"
 511         for f in $files; do
 512             printf "%s," $f
 513         done
 514         echo
 515     ) > "$logfile"
 516 fi
 517
 518 log_battery() {
 519     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 520     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 521     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 522         for f in $files; do \
 523             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 524         done)
 525     echo "$msg"
 526 }
 527
 528 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 529
 530 for bat in BAT*; do
 531     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 532 done
 533 </pre>
 534
 535 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 536 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 537 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 538 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 539 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 540 The code for the Debian package
 541 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 542 available on github</a>.</p>
 543
 544 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 545
 546 <pre>
 547 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 548 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 549 [...]
 550 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 551 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 552 </pre>
 553
 554 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 555 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 556 battery.</p>
 557
 558 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 559 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 560 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 561 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 562 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 563 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 564 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 565 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 566 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 567 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 568 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 569 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 570 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 571 Linux too.</p>
 572
 573 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 574 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 575 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 576 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 577 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 578 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 579 load).</p>
 580
 581 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 582 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 583 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 584 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 585 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 586 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 587 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 588 those.</p>
 589
 590 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 591 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 592 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 593 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 594 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 595 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 596 specific.</p>
 597
 598       </div>
 599       <div class="tags">
 600
 601
 602         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>.
 603
 604
 605       </div>
 606     </div>
 607     <div class="padding"></div>
 608
 609     <div class="entry">
 610       <div class="title">
 611         <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>
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="date">
 614          5th July 2015
 615       </div>
 616       <div class="body">
 617         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 618 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 619 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 620 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 621 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 622 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 623 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 624 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 625 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 626 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 627 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 628
 629 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 630 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 631 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 632 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 633 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 634 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 635 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 636
 637 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 638 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 639 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 640 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 641 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 642 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 643 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 644 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 645 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 646 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 647 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 648 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 649 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 650 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 651 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 652
 653 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 654 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 655 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 656 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 657
 658 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 659 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 660
 661 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 662 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 663 different
 664 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 665 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 666
 667       </div>
 668       <div class="tags">
 669
 670
 671         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>.
 672
 673
 674       </div>
 675     </div>
 676     <div class="padding"></div>
 677
 678     <div class="entry">
 679       <div class="title">
 680         <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>
 681       </div>
 682       <div class="date">
 683          3rd July 2015
 684       </div>
 685       <div class="body">
 686         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 687 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 688 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 689 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 690 flickering.</p>
 691
 692 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 693 still as
 694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 695 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 696 good help from
 697 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 698 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 699 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 700 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 701 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 702 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 703 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 704 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 705 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 706
 707 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 708 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 709 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 710 have suggestions.</p>
 711
 712 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 713 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 714 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 715
 716       </div>
 717       <div class="tags">
 718
 719
 720         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>.
 721
 722
 723       </div>
 724     </div>
 725     <div class="padding"></div>
 726
 727     <div class="entry">
 728       <div class="title">
 729         <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>
 730       </div>
 731       <div class="date">
 732         22nd November 2014
 733       </div>
 734       <div class="body">
 735         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 736 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 737 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 738 courtesy of
 739 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 740 Schubert</a> and
 741 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 742 McVittie</a>.
 743
 744 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 745 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 746 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 747 you upgrade:</p>
 748
 749 <p><blockquote><pre>
 750 Package: systemd-sysv
 751 Pin: release o=Debian
 752 Pin-Priority: -1
 753 </pre></blockquote><p>
 754
 755 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
 756 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
 757 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
 758 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 759 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 760
 761 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 762 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 763 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 764 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 765 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 766 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 767
 768 <p><blockquote><pre>
 769 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 770 </pre></blockquote><p>
 771
 772 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 773
 774 <p><blockquote><pre>
 775 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 776 </pre></blockquote><p>
 777
 778 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 779 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 780
 781 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 782 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 783 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 784 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 785 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 786 Jessie is released.</p>
 787
 788 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 789 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 790 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 791 line.</p>
 792
 793       </div>
 794       <div class="tags">
 795
 796
 797         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>.
 798
 799
 800       </div>
 801     </div>
 802     <div class="padding"></div>
 803
 804     <div class="entry">
 805       <div class="title">
 806         <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>
 807       </div>
 808       <div class="date">
 809         10th November 2014
 810       </div>
 811       <div class="body">
 812         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 813 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 814 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 815
 816 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 817 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 818 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 819 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 820 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 821 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 822 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 823 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 824 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 825 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 826 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 827 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 828 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 829 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 830 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 831
 832 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 833 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 834 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 835 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 836 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 837 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 838 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 839 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 840 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 841 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 842 were fairly easy, and
 843 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 844 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 845 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 846 useful approach.</p>
 847
 848 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 849 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 850 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 851 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 852 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 853 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 854 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 855 this:</p>
 856
 857 <p><blockquote><pre>
 858 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 859   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 860 </pre></blockquote></p>
 861
 862 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 863 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 864
 865 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 866 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 867 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 868 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 869 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 870 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 871 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 872 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 873 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 874 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 875 system.</p>
 876
 877 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 878 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 879 SMTorP. :)</p>
 880
 881       </div>
 882       <div class="tags">
 883
 884
 885         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>.
 886
 887
 888       </div>
 889     </div>
 890     <div class="padding"></div>
 891
 892     <div class="entry">
 893       <div class="title">
 894         <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>
 895       </div>
 896       <div class="date">
 897         22nd October 2014
 898       </div>
 899       <div class="body">
 900         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 901 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 902 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 903 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 904 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 905 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 906 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 907 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 908 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 909 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 910 lists I recently took over:</p>
 911
 912 <p><blockquote><pre>
 913 % time listadmin xiph
 914 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 915 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 916
 917 real    0m1.709s
 918 user    0m0.232s
 919 sys     0m0.012s
 920 %
 921 </pre></blockquote></p>
 922
 923 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 924 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 925 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 926 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 927 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 928 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 929 program.</p>
 930
 931 <p>If you install
 932 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 933 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 934 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 935
 936 <p><blockquote><pre>
 937 username username@example.org
 938 spamlevel 23
 939 default discard
 940 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 941
 942 password secret
 943 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 944 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 945
 946 password hidden
 947 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 948 </pre></blockquote></p>
 949
 950 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 951 learn the details.</p>
 952
 953 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 954 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 955 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 956 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 957
 958 <p><blockquote><pre>
 959 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 960 </pre></blockquote></p>
 961
 962 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 963 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 964 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 965 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 966 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 967 email.</p>
 968
 969 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 970 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 971 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 972 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 973 software.</p>
 974
 975 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 976 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 977 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 978
 979 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 980 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 981 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 982 sure why.</p>
 983
 984       </div>
 985       <div class="tags">
 986
 987
 988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 989
 990
 991       </div>
 992     </div>
 993     <div class="padding"></div>
 994
 995     <div class="entry">
 996       <div class="title">
 997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 998       </div>
 999       <div class="date">
1000         17th October 2014
1001       </div>
1002       <div class="body">
1003         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1004 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1005 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1006 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1007 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1008 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1009 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1010
1011 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1012 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1013 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1014 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1015 of this story.)</p>
1016
1017 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1018 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1019 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1020 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1021 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1022 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1023 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1024 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1025 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1026 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1027
1028 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1029 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1030 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1031 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1032
1033 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1034 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1035
1036 <p><blockquote><pre>
1037 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1038 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1039 </pre></blockquote></p>
1040
1041 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1042 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1043 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1044 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1045 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1046 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1047 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1048 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1049
1050 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1051 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1052
1053 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1054 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1055 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1056 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1057 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1058
1059 <p><blockquote><pre>
1060 Task: isenkram-packages
1061 Section: hardware
1062 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1063  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1064  proposed.
1065 Test-new-install: show show
1066 Relevance: 8
1067 Packages: for-current-hardware
1068
1069 Task: isenkram-firmware
1070 Section: hardware
1071 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1072  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1073  packages are proposed.
1074 Test-new-install: mark show
1075 Relevance: 8
1076 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1077 </pre></blockquote></p>
1078
1079 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1080 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1081 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1082 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1083 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1084
1085 <p><blockquote><pre>
1086 #!/bin/sh
1087 #
1088 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1089 export PATH
1090 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1091 </pre></blockquote></p>
1092
1093 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1094 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1095
1096 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1097 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1098 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1099 install.</p>
1100
1101 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1102 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1103 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1104
1105       </div>
1106       <div class="tags">
1107
1108
1109         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>.
1110
1111
1112       </div>
1113     </div>
1114     <div class="padding"></div>
1115
1116     <div class="entry">
1117       <div class="title">
1118         <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>
1119       </div>
1120       <div class="date">
1121          4th October 2014
1122       </div>
1123       <div class="body">
1124         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1125 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1126 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1127 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1128
1129 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1130
1131 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1132 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1133 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1134
1135       </div>
1136       <div class="tags">
1137
1138
1139         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>.
1140
1141
1142       </div>
1143     </div>
1144     <div class="padding"></div>
1145
1146     <div class="entry">
1147       <div class="title">
1148         <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>
1149       </div>
1150       <div class="date">
1151          4th October 2014
1152       </div>
1153       <div class="body">
1154         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1155 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1156 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1157 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1158 Dibb.</p>
1159
1160 <p>I just wrapped up
1161 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1162 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1163 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1164 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1165 0.17.</p>
1166
1167 <ul>
1168
1169  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1170  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1171    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1172  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1173  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1174  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1175  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1176  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1177  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1178    the palette size is the same.</li>
1179  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1180  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1181  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1182  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1183    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1184
1185 </ul>
1186
1187 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1188 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1189 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1190
1191       </div>
1192       <div class="tags">
1193
1194
1195         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>.
1196
1197
1198       </div>
1199     </div>
1200     <div class="padding"></div>
1201
1202     <div class="entry">
1203       <div class="title">
1204         <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>
1205       </div>
1206       <div class="date">
1207         26th September 2014
1208       </div>
1209       <div class="body">
1210         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1211 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1212 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1213 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1214 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1215 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1216 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1217 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1218 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1219 future.  The
1220 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1221 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1222 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1223 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1224 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1225
1226 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1227 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1228 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1229 or rsync (use
1230 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1231 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1232 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1233 install with some tweaking.</p>
1234
1235 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1236 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1237
1238 <p><blockquote><pre>
1239 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1240 </pre></blockquote></p>
1241
1242 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1243 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1244 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1245 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1246
1247 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1248 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1249 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1250 your need.</p>
1251
1252 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1253 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1254 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1255 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1256 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1257 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1258 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1259 days.</p>
1260
1261 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1262 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1263 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1264 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1265 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1266 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1267 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1268 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1269 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1270
1271 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1272 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1273 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1274
1275       </div>
1276       <div class="tags">
1277
1278
1279         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>.
1280
1281
1282       </div>
1283     </div>
1284     <div class="padding"></div>
1285
1286     <div class="entry">
1287       <div class="title">
1288         <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>
1289       </div>
1290       <div class="date">
1291         25th September 2014
1292       </div>
1293       <div class="body">
1294         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1295 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1296 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1297 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1298 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1299 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1300 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1301 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1302 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1303 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1304 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1305 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1306 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1307
1308 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1309 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1310 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1311 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1312 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1313 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1314 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1315 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1316 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1317 list</a>. :)</p>
1318
1319       </div>
1320       <div class="tags">
1321
1322
1323         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>.
1324
1325
1326       </div>
1327     </div>
1328     <div class="padding"></div>
1329
1330     <div class="entry">
1331       <div class="title">
1332         <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>
1333       </div>
1334       <div class="date">
1335         16th September 2014
1336       </div>
1337       <div class="body">
1338         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1339 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1340 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1341 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1342 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1343 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1344 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1345 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1346 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1347 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1348 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1349 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1350 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1351 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1352
1353 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1354 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1355 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1356 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1357 depend on the small and clever package
1358 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1359 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1360 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1361 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1362 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1363 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1364 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1365 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1366 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1367 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1368 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1369
1370 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1371 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1372 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1373 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1374 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1375 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1376 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1377 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1378 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1379 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1380 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1381 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1382 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1383 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1384 dialog.</p>
1385
1386 <p><table>
1387
1388 <tr>
1389 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1390 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1391 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1392 <th>Reduction</th>
1393 </tr>
1394
1395 <tr>
1396 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1397 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1398 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1399 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1400 </tr>
1401
1402 <tr>
1403 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1404 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1405 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1406 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1407 </tr>
1408
1409 <tr>
1410 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1411 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1412 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1413 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1414 </tr>
1415
1416 <tr>
1417 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1418 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1419 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1420 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1421 </tr>
1422
1423 <tr>
1424 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1425 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1426 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1427 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1428 </tr>
1429
1430 </table></p>
1431
1432 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1433 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1434 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1435 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1436 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1437 installed.</p>
1438
1439 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1440 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1441 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1442 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1443 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1444 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1445 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1446 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1447 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1448 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1449 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1450 for the entire installation.</p>
1451
1452 <p>I've implemented this in the
1453 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1454 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1455 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1456 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1457 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1458
1459 <p><blockquote><pre>
1460 #!/bin/sh
1461 set -e
1462 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1463 info() {
1464     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1465 }
1466 error() {
1467     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1468 }
1469 override_install() {
1470     apt-install eatmydata || true
1471     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1472         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1473             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1474             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1475             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1476                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1477                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1478                     > /target$file.edu
1479                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1480                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1481                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1482                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1483             else
1484                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1485             fi
1486         done
1487     else
1488         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1489     fi
1490 }
1491
1492 override_install
1493 </pre></blockquote></p>
1494
1495 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1496 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1497
1498 <p><blockquote><pre>
1499 #! /bin/sh -e
1500 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1501 error() {
1502     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1503 }
1504 remove_install_override() {
1505     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1506         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1507         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1508             rm /target$file
1509             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1510                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1511             rm /target$file.edu
1512         else
1513             error "Missing divert for $file."
1514         fi
1515     done
1516     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1517 }
1518
1519 remove_install_override
1520 </pre></blockquote></p>
1521
1522 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1523 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1524 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1525
1526 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1527 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1528 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1529 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1530 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1531 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1532 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1533 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1534 everyone.</p>
1535
1536 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1537 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1538 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1539 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1540
1541 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1542 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1543 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1544 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1545 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1546
1547 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1548 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1549 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1550 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1551 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1552
1553       </div>
1554       <div class="tags">
1555
1556
1557         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>.
1558
1559
1560       </div>
1561     </div>
1562     <div class="padding"></div>
1563
1564     <div class="entry">
1565       <div class="title">
1566         <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>
1567       </div>
1568       <div class="date">
1569         10th September 2014
1570       </div>
1571       <div class="body">
1572         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1573 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1574 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1575 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1576 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1577 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1578 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1579 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1580 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1581 those problems are gone now.</p>
1582
1583 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1584 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1585 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1586 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1587 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1588
1589 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1590 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1591 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1592
1593 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1594 line:</p>
1595
1596 <p><blockquote><pre>
1597 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1598 </pre></blockquote></p>
1599
1600 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1601 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1602 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1603 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1604
1605 <p><blockquote><pre>
1606 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1607 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1608 %
1609 </pre></blockquote></p>
1610
1611 <p>Now if only
1612 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1613 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1614 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1615 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1616 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1617 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1618 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1619 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1620 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1621
1622       </div>
1623       <div class="tags">
1624
1625
1626         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>.
1627
1628
1629       </div>
1630     </div>
1631     <div class="padding"></div>
1632
1633     <div class="entry">
1634       <div class="title">
1635         <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>
1636       </div>
1637       <div class="date">
1638         17th June 2014
1639       </div>
1640       <div class="body">
1641         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1642 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1643 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1644 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1645 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1646
1647 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1648 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1649 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1650 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1651 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1652 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1653 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1654 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1655 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1656 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1657 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1658 goals.</p>
1659
1660 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1661 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1662 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1663 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1664 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1665 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1666 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1667 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1668 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1669 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1670 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1671 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1672 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1673 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1674 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1675 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1676 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1677 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1678 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1679 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1680 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1681 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1682 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1683 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1684
1685 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1686 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1687 track the English original.  For this we use the
1688 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1689 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1690 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1691 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1692 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1693 files), which the translations update with the native language
1694 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1695 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1696 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1697 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1698 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1699 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1700 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1701 of the documentation.</p>
1702
1703 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1704 recommend using
1705 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1706 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1707 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1708 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1709 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1710 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1711 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1712 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1713
1714 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1715 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1716 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1717 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1718 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1719 translated images by storing translated versions in
1720 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1721 package maintainers know more.</p>
1722
1723 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1724 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1725 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1726 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1727 PDF version</a> or the
1728 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1729 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1730 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1731
1732 <p>To learn more, check out
1733 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1734 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1735 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1736 manual on the wiki</a> and
1737 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1738 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1739
1740       </div>
1741       <div class="tags">
1742
1743
1744         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>.
1745
1746
1747       </div>
1748     </div>
1749     <div class="padding"></div>
1750
1751     <div class="entry">
1752       <div class="title">
1753         <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>
1754       </div>
1755       <div class="date">
1756         23rd April 2014
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="body">
1759         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1760 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1761 So I implemented one, using
1762 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
1763 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1764 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1765 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
1766 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1767 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
1768
1769 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1770 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1771 packages to install.  The first part is in
1772 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
1773 this:</p>
1774
1775 <p><blockquote><pre>
1776 Task: isenkram
1777 Section: hardware
1778 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1779  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1780  proposed.
1781 Test-new-install: mark show
1782 Relevance: 8
1783 Packages: for-current-hardware
1784 </pre></blockquote></p>
1785
1786 <p>The second part is in
1787 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
1788 this:</p>
1789
1790 <p><blockquote><pre>
1791 #!/bin/sh
1792 #
1793 (
1794     isenkram-lookup
1795     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1796 ) | sort -u
1797 </pre></blockquote></p>
1798
1799 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1800 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1801 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
1802 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1803 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1804 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
1805
1806 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1807 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1808 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1809 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1810 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1811 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
1812 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
1813 the python-apt code (bug
1814 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
1815 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1816 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1817 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1818 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1819 unstable today.</p>
1820
1821 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1822 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1823 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1824 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1825 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
1826 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1827 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1828 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1829 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
1830
1831 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1832 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1833 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1834 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1835 package.  See also
1836 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1837 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
1838 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1839 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
1840
1841       </div>
1842       <div class="tags">
1843
1844
1845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1846
1847
1848       </div>
1849     </div>
1850     <div class="padding"></div>
1851
1852     <div class="entry">
1853       <div class="title">
1854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
1855       </div>
1856       <div class="date">
1857         15th April 2014
1858       </div>
1859       <div class="body">
1860         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1861 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1862 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1863 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1864 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1865 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
1866
1867 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1868 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1869 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1870 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1871 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1872 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1873 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
1874
1875 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1876 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
1877 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1878 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1879 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1880 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1881 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1882 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1883 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1884 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1885 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1886 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1887
1888 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1889 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1890 become root:</p>
1891
1892 <p><pre>
1893 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1894   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1895   u-boot-tools
1896 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1897   freedom-maker
1898 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1899 </pre></p>
1900
1901 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1902 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1903 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1904 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1905 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1906 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1907 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1908 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
1909
1910 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1911 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1912 the preseed values:</p>
1913
1914 <p><pre>
1915 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1916 </pre></p>
1917
1918 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1919 it still work.</p>
1920
1921 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1922 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1923 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1924 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1925 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1926 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1927 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
1928
1929 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1930 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1931 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1932 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1933 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1934 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1935
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="tags">
1938
1939
1940         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>.
1941
1942
1943       </div>
1944     </div>
1945     <div class="padding"></div>
1946
1947     <div class="entry">
1948       <div class="title">
1949         <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>
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="date">
1952          9th April 2014
1953       </div>
1954       <div class="body">
1955         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1956 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1957 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1958 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1959 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1960 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1961 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1962 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1963 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1964 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1965 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1966 have looked at a system called
1967 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
1968 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
1969
1970 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1971 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1972 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1973 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1974 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1975 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1976 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1977 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1978 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1979 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1980 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1981 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1982 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
1983
1984 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1985 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
1986 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1987 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1988 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1989 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
1990 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1991 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1992 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1993 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1994 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1995 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1996 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1997 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1998 account.</p>
1999
2000 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2001 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2002 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2003 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2004 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2005 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2006 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2007
2008 <p><blockquote><pre>
2009 [s3c]
2010 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2011 backend-login: API-login
2012 backend-password: API-password
2013 fs-passphrase: local-password
2014 </pre></blockquote></p>
2015
2016 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2017 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2018 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2019 details and password to create it:</p>
2020
2021 <p><blockquote><pre>
2022 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2023 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2024   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2025 Enter backend login:
2026 Enter backend password:
2027 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2028 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2029 Enter encryption password:
2030 Confirm encryption password:
2031 Generating random encryption key...
2032 Creating metadata tables...
2033 Dumping metadata...
2034 ..objects..
2035 ..blocks..
2036 ..inodes..
2037 ..inode_blocks..
2038 ..symlink_targets..
2039 ..names..
2040 ..contents..
2041 ..ext_attributes..
2042 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2043 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2044 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2045
2046 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2047
2048 <p><blockquote><pre>
2049 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2050   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2051 Using 4 upload threads.
2052 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2053 Reading metadata...
2054 ..objects..
2055 ..blocks..
2056 ..inodes..
2057 ..inode_blocks..
2058 ..symlink_targets..
2059 ..names..
2060 ..contents..
2061 ..ext_attributes..
2062 Mounting filesystem...
2063 # df -h /s3ql
2064 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2065 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2066 #
2067 </pre></blockquote></p>
2068
2069 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2070 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2071 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2072 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2073 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2074 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2075
2076 <p><blockquote><pre>
2077 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2078 #
2079 </pre></blockquote></p>
2080
2081 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2082 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2083 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2084 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2085 file system:</p>
2086
2087 <p><blockquote><pre>
2088 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2089 Using cached metadata.
2090 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2091 Checking DB integrity...
2092 Creating temporary extra indices...
2093 Checking lost+found...
2094 Checking cached objects...
2095 Checking names (refcounts)...
2096 Checking contents (names)...
2097 Checking contents (inodes)...
2098 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2099 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2100 Checking objects (backend)...
2101 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2102 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2103 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2104 Checking objects (sizes)...
2105 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2106 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2107 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2108 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2109 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2110 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2111 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2112 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2113 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2114 Checking directory reachability...
2115 Checking unix conventions...
2116 Checking referential integrity...
2117 Dropping temporary indices...
2118 Backing up old metadata...
2119 Dumping metadata...
2120 ..objects..
2121 ..blocks..
2122 ..inodes..
2123 ..inode_blocks..
2124 ..symlink_targets..
2125 ..names..
2126 ..contents..
2127 ..ext_attributes..
2128 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2129 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2130 #
2131 </pre></blockquote></p>
2132
2133 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2134 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2135 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2136 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2137 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2138 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2139 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2140 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2141 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2142 working set.</p>
2143
2144 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2145 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2146 busy:</p>
2147
2148 <p><blockquote><pre>
2149 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2150   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2151 Using 8 upload threads.
2152 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2153 #
2154 </pre></blockquote></p>
2155
2156 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2157 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2158 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2159 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2160 s3qlctrl:
2161
2162 <p><blockquote><pre>
2163 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2164 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2165 #
2166 </pre></blockquote></p>
2167
2168 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2169 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2170 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2171 a report:</p>
2172
2173 <p><blockquote><pre>
2174 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2175 Directory entries:    9141
2176 Inodes:               9143
2177 Data blocks:          8851
2178 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2179 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2180 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2181 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2182 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2183 #
2184 </pre></blockquote></p>
2185
2186 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2187 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2188 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2189 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2190 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2191 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2192 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2193 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2194 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2195 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2196 best.</p>
2197
2198 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2199 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2200 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2201 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2202 poster is titled
2203 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2204 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2205 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2206 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2207 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2208
2209 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2210 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2211 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2212 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2213 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2214 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2215 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2216 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2217
2218 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2219 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2220 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2221 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2222 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2223 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2224 only read from it.</p>
2225
2226 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2227 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2228 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2229
2230       </div>
2231       <div class="tags">
2232
2233
2234         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2235
2236
2237       </div>
2238     </div>
2239     <div class="padding"></div>
2240
2241     <div class="entry">
2242       <div class="title">
2243         <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>
2244       </div>
2245       <div class="date">
2246         14th March 2014
2247       </div>
2248       <div class="body">
2249         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2250 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2251 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2252 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2253 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2254 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2255 release (0.2).</p>
2256
2257 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2258 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2259 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2260 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2261 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2262 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2263 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2264 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2265 and build using
2266 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2267 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2268
2269 <pre>
2270 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2271   freedom-maker
2272 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2273   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2274   u-boot-tools
2275 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2276 </pre>
2277
2278 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2279 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2280 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2281 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2282 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2283 kpartx call.</p>
2284
2285 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2286 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2287 the preseed values:</p>
2288
2289 <pre>
2290 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2291 </pre>
2292
2293 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2294 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2295 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2296 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2297 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2298 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2299
2300 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2301 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2302 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2303 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2304 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2305 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2306
2307       </div>
2308       <div class="tags">
2309
2310
2311         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>.
2312
2313
2314       </div>
2315     </div>
2316     <div class="padding"></div>
2317
2318     <div class="entry">
2319       <div class="title">
2320         <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>
2321       </div>
2322       <div class="date">
2323         22nd February 2014
2324       </div>
2325       <div class="body">
2326         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2327 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2328 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2329 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2330 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2331 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2332 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2333 proper home since then.</p>
2334
2335 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2336 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2337 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2338 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2339 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2340
2341 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2342 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2343 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2344 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2345 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2346 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2347 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2348 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2349 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2350
2351       </div>
2352       <div class="tags">
2353
2354
2355         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>.
2356
2357
2358       </div>
2359     </div>
2360     <div class="padding"></div>
2361
2362     <div class="entry">
2363       <div class="title">
2364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2365       </div>
2366       <div class="date">
2367          3rd February 2014
2368       </div>
2369       <div class="body">
2370         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2371 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2372 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2373 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2374 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2375 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2376 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2377 <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>,
2378 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2379
2380 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2381 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2382 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2383 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2384 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2385 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2386
2387 <p><blockquote><pre>
2388 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2389 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2390 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2391 dhclient /dev/eth0
2392 </pre></blockquote></p>
2393
2394 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2395 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2396 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2397
2398 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2399 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2400 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2401 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2402 side.</p>
2403
2404 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2405 stuff:</p>
2406
2407 <p><blockquote><pre>
2408 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2409 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2410 EOF
2411 apt-get update
2412 apt-get dist-upgrade
2413 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2414     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2415 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2416 </pre></blockquote></p>
2417
2418 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2419 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2420 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2421 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2422 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2423 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2424 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2425 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2426 ssh instead.
2427
2428 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2429 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2430 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2431 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2432 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2433 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2434
2435 <p><blockquote><pre>
2436 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2437 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2438 EOF
2439 </pre></blockquote></p>
2440
2441 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2442 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2443 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2444 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2445
2446 <p><blockquote><pre>
2447 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2448 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2449 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2450 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2451 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2452 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2453 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2454 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2455 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2456 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2457 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2458 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2459 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2460 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2461 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2462 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2463 #
2464 </pre></blockquote></p>
2465
2466 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2467 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2468 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2469 command line stuff.<p>
2470
2471       </div>
2472       <div class="tags">
2473
2474
2475         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>.
2476
2477
2478       </div>
2479     </div>
2480     <div class="padding"></div>
2481
2482     <div class="entry">
2483       <div class="title">
2484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2485       </div>
2486       <div class="date">
2487         14th January 2014
2488       </div>
2489       <div class="body">
2490         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2491 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2492 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2493 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2494 the source.  The company behind it provide
2495 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2496 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2497 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2498 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2499 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2500 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2501 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2502 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2503 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2504 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2505 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2506 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2507 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2508 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2509 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2510 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2511 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2512 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2513 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2514
2515 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2516
2517 <ul>
2518
2519   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2520   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2521   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2522
2523 </ul>
2524
2525 <p>You can
2526 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2527 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2528 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2529 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2530 include a test suite check.</p>
2531
2532       </div>
2533       <div class="tags">
2534
2535
2536         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>.
2537
2538
2539       </div>
2540     </div>
2541     <div class="padding"></div>
2542
2543     <div class="entry">
2544       <div class="title">
2545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2546       </div>
2547       <div class="date">
2548         24th November 2013
2549       </div>
2550       <div class="body">
2551         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2552 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2553 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2554 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2555 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2556 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2557 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2558 is working on.  I checked the
2559 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2560 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2561 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2562 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2563 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2564 These are the release notes:</p>
2565
2566 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2567
2568 <ul>
2569
2570   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2571    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2572    up.</li>
2573
2574   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2575
2576   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2577    Matthias Klose.</li>
2578
2579   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2580    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2581
2582   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2583    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2584    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2585
2586 </ul>
2587
2588 <p>You can
2589 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2590 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2591 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2592 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2593 include a testsuite check.</p>
2594
2595       </div>
2596       <div class="tags">
2597
2598
2599         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>.
2600
2601
2602       </div>
2603     </div>
2604     <div class="padding"></div>
2605
2606     <div class="entry">
2607       <div class="title">
2608         <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>
2609       </div>
2610       <div class="date">
2611          2nd November 2013
2612       </div>
2613       <div class="body">
2614         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2615 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2616 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2617 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2618 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2619
2620 <p><pre>
2621 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2622 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2623 # Provides:          rsyslog
2624 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2625 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2626 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2627 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2628 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2629 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2630 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2631 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2632 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2633 ### END INIT INFO
2634 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2635 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2636 </pre></p>
2637
2638 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2639 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2640 info/comments.</p>
2641
2642 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2643 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2644
2645 <p><pre>
2646 #!/bin/sh
2647
2648 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2649 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2650 # and status_of_proc is working.
2651 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2652
2653 #
2654 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2655
2656 #
2657 do_start()
2658 {
2659         # Return
2660         #   0 if daemon has been started
2661         #   1 if daemon was already running
2662         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2663         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2664                 || return 1
2665         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2666                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2667                 || return 2
2668         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2669         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2670         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2671 }
2672
2673 #
2674 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2675 #
2676 do_stop()
2677 {
2678         # Return
2679         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2680         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2681         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2682         #   other if a failure occurred
2683         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2684         RETVAL="$?"
2685         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2686         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2687         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2688         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2689         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2690         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2691         # sleep for some time.
2692         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2693         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2694         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2695         rm -f $PIDFILE
2696         return "$RETVAL"
2697 }
2698
2699 #
2700 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2701 #
2702 do_reload() {
2703         #
2704         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2705         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2706         # then implement that here.
2707         #
2708         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2709         return 0
2710 }
2711
2712 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2713 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2714 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2715 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2716     script="$1"
2717     shift
2718     . $script
2719 else
2720     exit 0
2721 fi
2722
2723 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2724 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2725
2726 # Exit if the package is not installed
2727 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
2728
2729 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2730 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
2731
2732 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2733 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2734
2735 case "$1" in
2736   start)
2737         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
2738         do_start
2739         case "$?" in
2740                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2741                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2742         esac
2743         ;;
2744   stop)
2745         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
2746         do_stop
2747         case "$?" in
2748                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2749                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2750         esac
2751         ;;
2752   status)
2753         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
2754         ;;
2755   #reload|force-reload)
2756         #
2757         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2758         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
2759         #
2760         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
2761         #do_reload
2762         #log_end_msg $?
2763         #;;
2764   restart|force-reload)
2765         #
2766         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
2767         # 'force-reload' alias
2768         #
2769         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
2770         do_stop
2771         case "$?" in
2772           0|1)
2773                 do_start
2774                 case "$?" in
2775                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2776                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2777                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2778                 esac
2779                 ;;
2780           *)
2781                 # Failed to stop
2782                 log_end_msg 1
2783                 ;;
2784         esac
2785         ;;
2786   *)
2787         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
2788         exit 3
2789         ;;
2790 esac
2791
2792 :
2793 </pre></p>
2794
2795 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2796 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2797 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
2798 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
2799
2800 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2801 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2802 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2803 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
2804 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
2805
2806       </div>
2807       <div class="tags">
2808
2809
2810         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>.
2811
2812
2813       </div>
2814     </div>
2815     <div class="padding"></div>
2816
2817     <div class="entry">
2818       <div class="title">
2819         <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>
2820       </div>
2821       <div class="date">
2822          1st November 2013
2823       </div>
2824       <div class="body">
2825         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
2826 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2827 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2828 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2829 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
2830 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2831 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2832 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2833 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
2834 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2835 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2836 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
2837
2838 <p>The source is now available from
2839 <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>
2840
2841       </div>
2842       <div class="tags">
2843
2844
2845         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>.
2846
2847
2848       </div>
2849     </div>
2850     <div class="padding"></div>
2851
2852     <div class="entry">
2853       <div class="title">
2854         <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>
2855       </div>
2856       <div class="date">
2857         27th October 2013
2858       </div>
2859       <div class="body">
2860         <p>The
2861 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
2862 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
2863 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2864 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2865 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2866 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
2867 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2868 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
2869 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2870 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2871 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2872 Raspberry Pi.</p>
2873
2874 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
2875 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2876 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2877 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2878 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2879 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
2880 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
2881 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
2882 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2883 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
2884 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
2885 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
2886 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2887 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2888 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
2889 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2890 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
2891 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2892 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2893 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
2894 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2895 available from
2896 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
2897 upstream project page</a>.</p>
2898
2899 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2900 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2901 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2902 list:</p>
2903
2904 <p><pre>
2905 #!/bin/sh
2906 set -e # Exit on first error
2907 rootdir="$1"
2908 cd "$rootdir"
2909 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
2910 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2911 EOF
2912 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
2913 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2914 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2915     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2916 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2917 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2918 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2919 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2920 </pre></p>
2921
2922 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2923 to build the image:</p>
2924
2925 <pre>
2926 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2927     --variant minbase \
2928     --arch armel \
2929     --distribution jessie \
2930     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2931     --image test.img \
2932     --size 600M \
2933     --bootsize 64M \
2934     --boottype vfat \
2935     --log-level debug \
2936     --verbose \
2937     --no-kernel \
2938     --no-extlinux \
2939     --root-password raspberry \
2940     --hostname raspberrypi \
2941     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2942     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2943     --package netbase \
2944     --package git-core \
2945     --package binutils \
2946     --package ca-certificates \
2947     --package wget \
2948     --package kmod
2949 </pre></p>
2950
2951 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2952 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2953 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2954 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2955 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2956 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2957 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
2958
2959 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2960 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2961 build dependency list.</p>
2962
2963 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2964 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2965 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2966 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
2967
2968       </div>
2969       <div class="tags">
2970
2971
2972         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>.
2973
2974
2975       </div>
2976     </div>
2977     <div class="padding"></div>
2978
2979     <div class="entry">
2980       <div class="title">
2981         <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>
2982       </div>
2983       <div class="date">
2984         15th October 2013
2985       </div>
2986       <div class="body">
2987         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2988 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2989 these. :)</p>
2990
2991 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2992 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2993 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2994 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2995 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2996 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2997 hope you will to. :)</p>
2998
2999 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3000 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3001 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3002 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3003 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3004
3005 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3006 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3007 statement under the heading
3008 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3009 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3010 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3011 too.</p>
3012
3013       </div>
3014       <div class="tags">
3015
3016
3017         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>.
3018
3019
3020       </div>
3021     </div>
3022     <div class="padding"></div>
3023
3024     <div class="entry">
3025       <div class="title">
3026         <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>
3027       </div>
3028       <div class="date">
3029         27th September 2013
3030       </div>
3031       <div class="body">
3032         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3033 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3034 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3035 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3036
3037 <ul>
3038
3039 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3040 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3041
3042 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3043 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3044
3045 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3046 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3047 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3048 (Youtube)</li>
3049
3050 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3051 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3052
3053 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3054 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3055
3056 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3057 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3058 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3059
3060 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3061 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3062 (Youtube)</li>
3063
3064 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3065 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3066
3067 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3068 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3069
3070 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3071 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3072 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3073
3074 </ul>
3075
3076 <p>A larger list is available from
3077 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3078 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3079
3080 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3081 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3082 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3083 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3084 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3085 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3086 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3087 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3088 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3089 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3090 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3091
3092       </div>
3093       <div class="tags">
3094
3095
3096         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>.
3097
3098
3099       </div>
3100     </div>
3101     <div class="padding"></div>
3102
3103     <div class="entry">
3104       <div class="title">
3105         <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>
3106       </div>
3107       <div class="date">
3108         10th September 2013
3109       </div>
3110       <div class="body">
3111         <p>I was introduced to the
3112 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3113 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3114 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3115 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3116 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3117 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3118 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3119 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3120
3121 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3122 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3123 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3124 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3125 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3126
3127 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3128 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3129 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3130 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3131 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3132 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3133 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3134 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3135 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3136 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3137 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3138 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3139 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3140 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3141 missing in Debian).</p>
3142
3143 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3144 scripts
3145 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3146 and a administrative web interface
3147 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3148 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3149 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3150 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3151 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3152 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3153 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3154 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3155 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3156 this is really working yet, see
3157 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3158 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3159 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3160 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3161 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3162 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3163 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3164
3165 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3166 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3167 at.</p>
3168
3169 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3170
3171 <ol>
3172
3173 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3174 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3175 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3176 to the Debian installer:<p>
3177 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3178
3179 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3180 install on.</li>
3181
3182 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3183 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3184
3185 </ol>
3186
3187 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3188
3189 <ol>
3190
3191 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3192 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3193 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3194 <pre>
3195 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3196 </pre></li>
3197 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3198 <pre>
3199 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3200    apt-key add -
3201 apt-get update
3202 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3203 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3204 </pre></li>
3205 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3206
3207 </ol>
3208
3209 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3210 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3211 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3212 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3213 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3214
3215 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3216 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3217 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3218 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3219
3220 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3221 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3222 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3223 irc.debian.org and the
3224 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3225 mailing list</a>.</p>
3226
3227 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3228 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3229 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3230 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3231 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3232 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3233
3234       </div>
3235       <div class="tags">
3236
3237
3238         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>.
3239
3240
3241       </div>
3242     </div>
3243     <div class="padding"></div>
3244
3245     <div class="entry">
3246       <div class="title">
3247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3248       </div>
3249       <div class="date">
3250         18th August 2013
3251       </div>
3252       <div class="body">
3253         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3254 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3255 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3256 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3257 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3258 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3259 currently on the disk.</p>
3260
3261 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3262 <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>
3263 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3264 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3265 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3266 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3267 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3268 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3269 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3270 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3271 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3272 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3273 the broken disks.</p>
3274
3275       </div>
3276       <div class="tags">
3277
3278
3279         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3280
3281
3282       </div>
3283     </div>
3284     <div class="padding"></div>
3285
3286     <div class="entry">
3287       <div class="title">
3288         <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>
3289       </div>
3290       <div class="date">
3291         17th July 2013
3292       </div>
3293       <div class="body">
3294         <p>Today I switched to
3295 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3296 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3297 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3298 <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
3299 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3300 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3301 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3302 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3303 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3304 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3305 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3306 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3307 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3308 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3309 station from now on.</p>
3310
3311 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3312 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3313 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3314 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3315 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3316 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3317 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3318 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3319 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3320 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3321 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3322 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3323
3324 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3325 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3326 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3327 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3328 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3329 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3330 parameters are tuned:</p>
3331
3332 <ul>
3333
3334 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3335     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3336
3337 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3338     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3339     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3340
3341 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3342     systems.</li>
3343
3344 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3345     /etc/fstab.</li>
3346
3347 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3348
3349 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3350     cron.daily).</li>
3351
3352 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3353     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3354
3355 </ul>
3356
3357 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3358 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3359 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3360 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3361 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3362 from getting the data on the disk (see
3363 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3364 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3365 right thing to do.</p>
3366
3367 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3368 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3369 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3370
3371 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3372 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3373 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3374 instead of during my work.</p>
3375
3376 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3377 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3378
3379 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3380 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3381 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3382
3383 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3384 there.</p>
3385
3386 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3387 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3388 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3389 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3390 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3391 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3392 back.</p>
3393
3394       </div>
3395       <div class="tags">
3396
3397
3398         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>.
3399
3400
3401       </div>
3402     </div>
3403     <div class="padding"></div>
3404
3405     <div class="entry">
3406       <div class="title">
3407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3408       </div>
3409       <div class="date">
3410         10th July 2013
3411       </div>
3412       <div class="body">
3413         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3414 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3415 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3416 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3417 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3418 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3419 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3420 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3421
3422 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3423 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3424 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3425 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3426 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3427 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3428 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3429 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3430 lock up when I download a new
3431 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3432 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3433 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3434
3435 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3436 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3437 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3438 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3439 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3440 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3441
3442 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3443 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3444 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3445 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3446 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3447 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3448
3449 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3450 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3451 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3452 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3453 exist).</p>
3454
3455       </div>
3456       <div class="tags">
3457
3458
3459         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>.
3460
3461
3462       </div>
3463     </div>
3464     <div class="padding"></div>
3465
3466     <div class="entry">
3467       <div class="title">
3468         <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>
3469       </div>
3470       <div class="date">
3471          9th July 2013
3472       </div>
3473       <div class="body">
3474         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3475 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3476 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3477 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3478 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3479 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3480 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3481
3482 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3483 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3484 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3485 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3486 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3487
3488       </div>
3489       <div class="tags">
3490
3491
3492         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>.
3493
3494
3495       </div>
3496     </div>
3497     <div class="padding"></div>
3498
3499     <div class="entry">
3500       <div class="title">
3501         <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>
3502       </div>
3503       <div class="date">
3504          5th July 2013
3505       </div>
3506       <div class="body">
3507         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3508 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3509 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3510 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3511 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3512 ended up picking a
3513 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3514 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3515 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3516 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3517 on that below.</p>
3518
3519 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3520 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3521 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3522 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3523 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3524 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3525 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3526 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3527 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3528
3529 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3530 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3531 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3532 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3533 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3534 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3535 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3536
3537 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3538 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3539
3540 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3541 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3542 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3543 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3544 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3545 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3546 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3547 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3548 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3549 kernel developers as
3550 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3551 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3552 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3553 Lenovo forums, both for
3554 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3555 2012-11-10</a> and for
3556 <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
3557 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3558 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3559 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3560 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3561 There is even a
3562 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3563 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3564 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3565
3566 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3567 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3568 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3569 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3570 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3571 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3572 fixed. :)</p>
3573
3574       </div>
3575       <div class="tags">
3576
3577
3578         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>.
3579
3580
3581       </div>
3582     </div>
3583     <div class="padding"></div>
3584
3585     <div class="entry">
3586       <div class="title">
3587         <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>
3588       </div>
3589       <div class="date">
3590          4th July 2013
3591       </div>
3592       <div class="body">
3593         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3594 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3595 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3596 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3597 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3598 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3599 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3600 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3601 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3602
3603 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3604 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3605 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3606 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3607 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3608 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3609 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3610
3611 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3612 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3613 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3614 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3615 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3616 new laptop now. :)</p>
3617
3618 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3619
3620       </div>
3621       <div class="tags">
3622
3623
3624         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>.
3625
3626
3627       </div>
3628     </div>
3629     <div class="padding"></div>
3630
3631     <div class="entry">
3632       <div class="title">
3633         <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>
3634       </div>
3635       <div class="date">
3636         25th June 2013
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="body">
3639         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3640 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3641 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3642 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3643 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3644 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3645 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3646 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3647 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3648 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3649 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3650
3651 <p><pre>
3652 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3653 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3654 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3655 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3656 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3657 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3658 firmware-ipw2x00
3659 firmware-ipw2x00
3660 Preconfiguring packages ...
3661 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3662 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3663 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3664 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3665 #
3666 </pre></p>
3667
3668 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3669 printed instead:</p>
3670
3671 <p><pre>
3672 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3673 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3674 #
3675 </pre></p>
3676
3677 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3678 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3679
3680 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3681 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3682 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3683 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3684 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3685 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3686 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3687 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3688 machine.</p>
3689
3690 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3691 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3692 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3693 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3694 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3695 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3696
3697       </div>
3698       <div class="tags">
3699
3700
3701         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>.
3702
3703
3704       </div>
3705     </div>
3706     <div class="padding"></div>
3707
3708     <div class="entry">
3709       <div class="title">
3710         <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>
3711       </div>
3712       <div class="date">
3713         11th June 2013
3714       </div>
3715       <div class="body">
3716         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3717 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3718 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3719 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3720 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3721 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3722 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3723 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3724 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3725 i915 driver used by the
3726 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3727 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3728
3729 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3730 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3731 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3732 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3733 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3734
3735 <pre>
3736 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3737 update-initramfs -u -k all
3738 </pre>
3739
3740 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3741 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3742 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3743 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3744 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3745 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3746 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3747 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3748 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3749 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3750 number.</p>
3751
3752 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3753 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3754
3755 <p><pre>
3756 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3757     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3758     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3759  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3760  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3761     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3762  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3763     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3764  Latency: 0
3765  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3766  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3767  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3768  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3769  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3770  Capabilities: <access denied>
3771  Kernel driver in use: i915
3772 </pre></p>
3773
3774 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3775
3776 <p><pre>
3777 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3778        ...
3779         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3780         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3781        ...
3782 }
3783 </pre></p>
3784
3785 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3786 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3787 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3788 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3789 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3790 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3791 yet shown up in
3792 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3793 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3794 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3795 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3796 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3797 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3798
3799 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3800 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3801 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3802 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3803 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3804 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3805 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3806 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3807 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3808 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3809 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3810 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3811
3812 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3813 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3814 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3815 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3816 backlight.</p>
3817
3818       </div>
3819       <div class="tags">
3820
3821
3822         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>.
3823
3824
3825       </div>
3826     </div>
3827     <div class="padding"></div>
3828
3829     <div class="entry">
3830       <div class="title">
3831         <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>
3832       </div>
3833       <div class="date">
3834         27th May 2013
3835       </div>
3836       <div class="body">
3837         <p>Two days ago, I asked
3838 <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
3839 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3840 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
3841 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3842 and Windows 8.</p>
3843
3844 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3845 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3846 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3847 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3848 enough to tell.</p>
3849
3850 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3851 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
3852 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3853 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
3854 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3855 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
3856 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3857 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3858 to follow.</p>
3859
3860 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3861 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3862 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3863 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
3864 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3865 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3866 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
3867 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
3868
3869 <p>I've updated the
3870 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3871 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
3872 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3873 machine.</p>
3874
3875 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3876 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
3877
3878       </div>
3879       <div class="tags">
3880
3881
3882         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>.
3883
3884
3885       </div>
3886     </div>
3887     <div class="padding"></div>
3888
3889     <div class="entry">
3890       <div class="title">
3891         <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>
3892       </div>
3893       <div class="date">
3894         25th May 2013
3895       </div>
3896       <div class="body">
3897         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
3898 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
3899 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
3900 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
3901 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3902 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
3903
3904 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3905 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
3906 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
3907 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3908 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3909 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
3910 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3911 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3912 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3913 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
3914
3915 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3916 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3917 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
3918 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3919 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3920 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
3921
3922 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3923 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3924 on new Laptops?</p>
3925
3926       </div>
3927       <div class="tags">
3928
3929
3930         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>.
3931
3932
3933       </div>
3934     </div>
3935     <div class="padding"></div>
3936
3937     <div class="entry">
3938       <div class="title">
3939         <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>
3940       </div>
3941       <div class="date">
3942         17th May 2013
3943       </div>
3944       <div class="body">
3945         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3946 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3947 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3948 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3949 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3950 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3951 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3952 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3953 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3954 donate some money</a>.
3955
3956 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3957 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3958 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3959 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3960 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3961
3962 <p>The script,
3963 <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/>
3964 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3965 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3966 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3967
3968 <ol>
3969
3970 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3971 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3972 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3973     our configuration.</li>
3974 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3975     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3976     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3977     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3978 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3979     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3980 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3981
3982 </ol>
3983
3984 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3985 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3986 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3987 the needed packages.</p>
3988
3989 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3990 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3991 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3992 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3993 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3994 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3995
3996 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3997 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3998 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3999
4000 <p><pre>
4001 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4002 DESKTOP="lxde"
4003 </pre></p>
4004
4005 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4006 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4007 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4008 boot.</p>
4009
4010       </div>
4011       <div class="tags">
4012
4013
4014         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>.
4015
4016
4017       </div>
4018     </div>
4019     <div class="padding"></div>
4020
4021     <div class="entry">
4022       <div class="title">
4023         <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>
4024       </div>
4025       <div class="date">
4026         11th May 2013
4027       </div>
4028       <div class="body">
4029         <P>In January,
4030 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4031 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4032 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4033 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4034 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4035 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4036 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4037 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4038 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4039 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4040 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4041 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4042
4043 <p><table>
4044 <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>
4045 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4046 <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>
4047 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4048 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4049 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4050 <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>
4051 <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>
4052 <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>
4053 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4054 </table></p>
4055
4056 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4057 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4058 available in experimental.</p>
4059
4060 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4061 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4062 for LEGO designers.</p>
4063
4064       </div>
4065       <div class="tags">
4066
4067
4068         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>.
4069
4070
4071       </div>
4072     </div>
4073     <div class="padding"></div>
4074
4075     <div class="entry">
4076       <div class="title">
4077         <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>
4078       </div>
4079       <div class="date">
4080          5th May 2013
4081       </div>
4082       <div class="body">
4083         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4084 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4085 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4086 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4087 soon.</p>
4088
4089 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4090 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4091 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4092 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4093 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4094 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4095 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4096 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4097 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4098 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4099 Edu.</a>
4100
4101 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4102 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4103 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4104 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4105 follow.<p>
4106
4107       </div>
4108       <div class="tags">
4109
4110
4111         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>.
4112
4113
4114       </div>
4115     </div>
4116     <div class="padding"></div>
4117
4118     <div class="entry">
4119       <div class="title">
4120         <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>
4121       </div>
4122       <div class="date">
4123          3rd April 2013
4124       </div>
4125       <div class="body">
4126         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4127 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4128 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4129 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4130
4131 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4132 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4133 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4134 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4135 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4136 BTS. :)</p>
4137
4138       </div>
4139       <div class="tags">
4140
4141
4142         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>.
4143
4144
4145       </div>
4146     </div>
4147     <div class="padding"></div>
4148
4149     <div class="entry">
4150       <div class="title">
4151         <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>
4152       </div>
4153       <div class="date">
4154          2nd February 2013
4155       </div>
4156       <div class="body">
4157         <p>My
4158 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4159 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4160 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4161 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4162 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4163 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4164 version too.</p>
4165
4166 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4167 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4168 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4169 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4170 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4171 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4172 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4173 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4174
4175 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4176 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4177 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4178 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4179 it. :)</p>
4180
4181 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4182 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4183 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4184
4185       </div>
4186       <div class="tags">
4187
4188
4189         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>.
4190
4191
4192       </div>
4193     </div>
4194     <div class="padding"></div>
4195
4196     <div class="entry">
4197       <div class="title">
4198         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4199       </div>
4200       <div class="date">
4201         22nd January 2013
4202       </div>
4203       <div class="body">
4204         <p>Yesterday, I
4205 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4206 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4207 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4208 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4209 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4210 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4211 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4212 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4213 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4214 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4215 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4216 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4217 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4218
4219 <pre>
4220 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4221 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4222 </pre>
4223
4224 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4225 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4226 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4227 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4228
4229 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4230 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4231 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4232 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4233 word.</p>
4234
4235 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4236 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4237 process.</p>
4238
4239 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4240 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4241
4242       </div>
4243       <div class="tags">
4244
4245
4246         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>.
4247
4248
4249       </div>
4250     </div>
4251     <div class="padding"></div>
4252
4253     <div class="entry">
4254       <div class="title">
4255         <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>
4256       </div>
4257       <div class="date">
4258         21st January 2013
4259       </div>
4260       <div class="body">
4261         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4262 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4263 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4264 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4265 it, fetch the
4266 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4267 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4268 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4269 autostart script.</p>
4270
4271 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4272
4273 <ul>
4274
4275 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4276 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4277
4278 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4279 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4280 initially did.</li>
4281
4282 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4283 the APT database, a database
4284 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4285 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4286
4287 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4288 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4289 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4290 package or packages.</li>
4291
4292 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4293 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4294
4295 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4296 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4297
4298 </ul>
4299
4300 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4301 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4302 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4303 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4304
4305 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4306 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4307 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4308 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4309 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4310
4311 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4312 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4313 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4314 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4315 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4316 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4317 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4318 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4319
4320 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4321 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4322 '<tt>svn checkout
4323 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4324 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4325 devscripts package.</p>
4326
4327 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4328 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4329 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4330 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4331 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4332
4333       </div>
4334       <div class="tags">
4335
4336
4337         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>.
4338
4339
4340       </div>
4341     </div>
4342     <div class="padding"></div>
4343
4344     <div class="entry">
4345       <div class="title">
4346         <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>
4347       </div>
4348       <div class="date">
4349         19th January 2013
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="body">
4352         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4353 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4354 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4355 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4356 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4357 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4358 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4359 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4360 not a durable solution.
4361
4362 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4363 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4364
4365 <ul>
4366
4367 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4368   than A4).</li>
4369 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4370 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4371 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4372 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4373 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4374 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4375 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4376 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4377 size).</li>
4378 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4379   X.org packages.</li>
4380 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4381   the time).
4382
4383 </ul>
4384
4385 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4386 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4387 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4388 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4389 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4390 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4391 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4392 still be useful.</p>
4393
4394 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4395 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4396 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4397 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4398 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4399 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4400
4401       </div>
4402       <div class="tags">
4403
4404
4405         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>.
4406
4407
4408       </div>
4409     </div>
4410     <div class="padding"></div>
4411
4412     <div class="entry">
4413       <div class="title">
4414         <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>
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="date">
4417         18th January 2013
4418       </div>
4419       <div class="body">
4420         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4421 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4422 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4423 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4424 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4425 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4426 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4427
4428 <pre>
4429 #!/usr/bin/python
4430 import sys
4431 import apt
4432 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4433     cache = apt.Cache()
4434     cache.open(None)
4435     thepkgs = []
4436     for pkg in cache:
4437         version = pkg.candidate
4438         if version is None:
4439             version = pkg.installed
4440         if version is None:
4441             continue
4442         record = version.record
4443         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4444             continue
4445         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4446         for t in mime_types:
4447             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4448             if t == mimetype:
4449                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4450     return thepkgs
4451 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4452 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4453     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4454 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4455 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4456     print "  %s" %pkg
4457 </pre>
4458
4459 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4460
4461 <pre>
4462 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4463 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4464   gecko-mediaplayer
4465 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4466 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4467   browser-plugin-gnash
4468 %
4469 </pre>
4470
4471 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4472 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4473 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4474 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4475
4476 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4477 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4478 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4479 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4480 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4481 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4482
4483       </div>
4484       <div class="tags">
4485
4486
4487         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>.
4488
4489
4490       </div>
4491     </div>
4492     <div class="padding"></div>
4493
4494     <div class="entry">
4495       <div class="title">
4496         <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>
4497       </div>
4498       <div class="date">
4499         16th January 2013
4500       </div>
4501       <div class="body">
4502         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4503 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4504 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4505 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4506 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4507 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4508 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4509 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4510
4511 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4512 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4513 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4514 can be found on the
4515 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4516 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4517 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4518 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4519 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4520
4521 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4522
4523 <pre>
4524   count MIME type
4525   ----- -----------------------
4526      32 text/plain
4527      30 audio/mpeg
4528      29 image/png
4529      28 image/jpeg
4530      27 application/ogg
4531      26 audio/x-mp3
4532      25 image/tiff
4533      25 image/gif
4534      22 image/bmp
4535      22 audio/x-wav
4536      20 audio/x-flac
4537      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4538      18 video/x-ms-asf
4539      18 audio/x-musepack
4540      18 audio/x-mpeg
4541      18 application/x-ogg
4542      17 video/mpeg
4543      17 audio/x-scpls
4544      17 audio/ogg
4545      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4546 </pre>
4547
4548 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4549
4550 <pre>
4551   count MIME type
4552   ----- -----------------------
4553      33 text/plain
4554      32 image/png
4555      32 image/jpeg
4556      29 audio/mpeg
4557      27 image/gif
4558      26 image/tiff
4559      26 application/ogg
4560      25 audio/x-mp3
4561      22 image/bmp
4562      21 audio/x-wav
4563      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4564      19 audio/x-mpeg
4565      18 video/mpeg
4566      18 audio/x-scpls
4567      18 audio/x-flac
4568      18 application/x-ogg
4569      17 video/x-ms-asf
4570      17 text/html
4571      17 audio/x-musepack
4572      16 image/x-xbitmap
4573 </pre>
4574
4575 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4576
4577 <pre>
4578   count MIME type
4579   ----- -----------------------
4580      31 text/plain
4581      31 image/png
4582      31 image/jpeg
4583      29 audio/mpeg
4584      28 application/ogg
4585      27 image/gif
4586      26 image/tiff
4587      26 audio/x-mp3
4588      23 audio/x-wav
4589      22 image/bmp
4590      21 audio/x-flac
4591      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4592      19 audio/x-mpeg
4593      18 video/x-ms-asf
4594      18 video/mpeg
4595      18 audio/x-scpls
4596      18 application/x-ogg
4597      17 audio/x-musepack
4598      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4599      16 video/x-msvideo
4600 </pre>
4601
4602 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4603 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4604 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4605 issues.</p>
4606
4607 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4608 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4609
4610       </div>
4611       <div class="tags">
4612
4613
4614         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>.
4615
4616
4617       </div>
4618     </div>
4619     <div class="padding"></div>
4620
4621     <div class="entry">
4622       <div class="title">
4623         <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>
4624       </div>
4625       <div class="date">
4626         15th January 2013
4627       </div>
4628       <div class="body">
4629         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4630 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4631 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4632 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4633 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4634 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4635 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4636 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4637 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4638 packages.</p>
4639
4640 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4641 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4642 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4643 modalias.</p>
4644
4645 <p><blockquote>
4646 Package: package-name
4647 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4648 </blockquote></p>
4649
4650 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4651 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4652
4653 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4654 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4655
4656 <p><blockquote>
4657 Package: cheese
4658 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4659 </blockquote></p>
4660
4661 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4662 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4663
4664 <p><blockquote>
4665 Package: pcmciautils
4666 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4667 </blockquote></p>
4668
4669 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4670 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4671
4672 <p><blockquote>
4673 Package: colorhug-client
4674 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4675 </blockquote></p>
4676
4677 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4678 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4679 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4680
4681 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4682 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4683 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4684 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4685 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4686 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4687 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4688 Raring.</p>
4689
4690 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4691 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4692 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4693 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4694 try the
4695 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4696 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4697 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4698 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4699
4700 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4701 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4702
4703 <p><blockquote>
4704 % ./hw-support-lookup
4705 <br>yubikey-personalization
4706 <br>%
4707 </blockquote></p>
4708
4709 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4710 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4711
4712 <p><blockquote>
4713 % ./hw-support-lookup
4714 <br>pcmciautils
4715 <br>%
4716 </blockquote></p>
4717
4718 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4719 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
4720 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
4721
4722 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4723 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
4724 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4725 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
4726 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4727 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4728 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
4729 see if it work.</p>
4730
4731 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4732 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4733 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4734 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4735
4736       </div>
4737       <div class="tags">
4738
4739
4740         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>.
4741
4742
4743       </div>
4744     </div>
4745     <div class="padding"></div>
4746
4747     <div class="entry">
4748       <div class="title">
4749         <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>
4750       </div>
4751       <div class="date">
4752         14th January 2013
4753       </div>
4754       <div class="body">
4755         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4756 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4757 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4758 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
4759 in
4760 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4761 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
4762
4763 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
4764
4765 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4766 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
4767 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
4768 &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;,
4769 &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
4770 &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;.
4771
4772 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4773 this shell script:</p>
4774
4775 <pre>
4776 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4777 </pre>
4778
4779 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4780 using modinfo:</p>
4781
4782 <pre>
4783 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4784 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4785 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4786 %
4787 </pre>
4788
4789 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
4790
4791 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
4792 Bridge memory controller:</p>
4793
4794 <p><blockquote>
4795 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4796 </blockquote></p>
4797
4798 <p>This represent these values:</p>
4799
4800 <pre>
4801  v   00008086  (vendor)
4802  d   00002770  (device)
4803  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
4804  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
4805  bc  06        (bus class)
4806  sc  00        (bus subclass)
4807  i   00        (interface)
4808 </pre>
4809
4810 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
4811 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4812 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
4813 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
4814
4815 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4816 means.</p>
4817
4818 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
4819
4820 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
4821 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
4822
4823 <p><blockquote>
4824 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4825 </blockquote></p>
4826
4827 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
4828
4829 <pre>
4830  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
4831  p    0001  (device product)
4832  d    0206  (bcddevice)
4833  dc     09  (device class)
4834  dsc    00  (device subclass)
4835  dp     00  (device protocol)
4836  ic     09  (interface class)
4837  isc    00  (interface subclass)
4838  ip     00  (interface protocol)
4839 </pre>
4840
4841 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
4842 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
4843 these alias entries show up:</p>
4844
4845 <p><blockquote>
4846 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4847 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4848 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4849 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4850 </blockquote></p>
4851
4852 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4853 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4854 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
4855
4856 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
4857
4858 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
4859 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
4860
4861 <p><blockquote>
4862 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4863 </blockquote></p>
4864
4865 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
4866
4867 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
4868
4869 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4870 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4871 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
4872
4873 <p><blockquote>
4874 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4875 </blockquote></p>
4876
4877 <p>The values present are</p>
4878
4879 <pre>
4880  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
4881  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4882  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
4883  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
4884  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
4885  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
4886  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
4887  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
4888  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
4889  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
4890  ct   10             (chassis type)
4891  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
4892 </pre>
4893
4894 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
4895 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
4896
4897 <pre>
4898   3 Desktop
4899   4 Low Profile Desktop
4900   5 Pizza Box
4901   6 Mini Tower
4902   7 Tower
4903   8 Portable
4904   9 Laptop
4905  10 Notebook
4906  11 Hand Held
4907  12 Docking Station
4908  13 All In One
4909  14 Sub Notebook
4910  15 Space-saving
4911  16 Lunch Box
4912  17 Main Server Chassis
4913  18 Expansion Chassis
4914  19 Sub Chassis
4915  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4916  21 Peripheral Chassis
4917  22 RAID Chassis
4918  23 Rack Mount Chassis
4919  24 Sealed-case PC
4920  25 Multi-system
4921  26 CompactPCI
4922  27 AdvancedTCA
4923  28 Blade
4924  29 Blade Enclosing
4925 </pre>
4926
4927 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4928 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4929 claim it is a desktop.</p>
4930
4931 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
4932
4933 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
4934 test machine:</p>
4935
4936 <p><blockquote>
4937 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4938 </blockquote></p>
4939
4940 <p>The values present are</p>
4941
4942 <pre>
4943   ty  01  (type)
4944   pr  00  (prototype)
4945   id  00  (id)
4946   ex  00  (extra)
4947 </pre>
4948
4949 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
4950 the valid values are.</p>
4951
4952 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
4953
4954 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4955 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4956 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4957 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4958 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
4959 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4960 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
4961
4962 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
4963
4964 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4965 one can use the following shell script:</p>
4966
4967 <pre>
4968   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4969     echo "$id" ; \
4970     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
4971   done
4972 </pre>
4973
4974 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4975 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
4976
4977 <pre>
4978   acpi:ACPI0003:
4979     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4980   acpi:device:
4981   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4982   acpi:IBM0068:
4983     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4984     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4985     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4986     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4987   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4988     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4989     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4990     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4991   [...]
4992 </pre>
4993
4994 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4995 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4996 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4997 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4998
4999 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5000 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5001 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5002
5003       </div>
5004       <div class="tags">
5005
5006
5007         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>.
5008
5009
5010       </div>
5011     </div>
5012     <div class="padding"></div>
5013
5014     <div class="entry">
5015       <div class="title">
5016         <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>
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="date">
5019         10th January 2013
5020       </div>
5021       <div class="body">
5022         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5023 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5024 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5025 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5026 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5027 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5028 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5029 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5030 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5031 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5032 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5033 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5034 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5035 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5036 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5037 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5038 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5039 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5040
5041       </div>
5042       <div class="tags">
5043
5044
5045         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>.
5046
5047
5048       </div>
5049     </div>
5050     <div class="padding"></div>
5051
5052     <div class="entry">
5053       <div class="title">
5054         <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>
5055       </div>
5056       <div class="date">
5057          9th January 2013
5058       </div>
5059       <div class="body">
5060         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5061 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5062 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5063 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5064 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5065 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5066 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5067 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5068 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5069 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5070 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5071
5072 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5073 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5074 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5075 simple:
5076
5077 <ul>
5078
5079 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5080   starting when a user log in.</li>
5081
5082 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5083   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5084
5085 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5086   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5087   packages.</li>
5088
5089 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5090   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5091
5092 </ul>
5093
5094 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5095 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5096 discover database to find packages and
5097 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5098 packages.</p>
5099
5100 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5101 draft package is now checked into
5102 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5103 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5104 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5105 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5106 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5107 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5108 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5109 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5110 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5111 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5112 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5113 because of the freeze).</p>
5114
5115 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5116 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5117 inserted):</p>
5118
5119 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5120
5121 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5122 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5123 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5124
5125 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5126 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5127 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5128 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5129 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5130 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5131 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5132
5133 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5134 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5135 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5136 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5137 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5138 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5139 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5140 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5141 not be installed?</p>
5142
5143 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5144 please send me an email. :)</p>
5145
5146       </div>
5147       <div class="tags">
5148
5149
5150         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>.
5151
5152
5153       </div>
5154     </div>
5155     <div class="padding"></div>
5156
5157     <div class="entry">
5158       <div class="title">
5159         <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>
5160       </div>
5161       <div class="date">
5162          2nd January 2013
5163       </div>
5164       <div class="body">
5165         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5166 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5167 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5168 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5169 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5170 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5171 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5172 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5173 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5174 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5175
5176 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5177 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5178 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5179
5180       </div>
5181       <div class="tags">
5182
5183
5184         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>.
5185
5186
5187       </div>
5188     </div>
5189     <div class="padding"></div>
5190
5191     <div class="entry">
5192       <div class="title">
5193         <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>
5194       </div>
5195       <div class="date">
5196         25th December 2012
5197       </div>
5198       <div class="body">
5199         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5200 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5201
5202 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5203 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5204 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5205 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5206 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5207 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5208 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5209 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5210 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5211 name.</p>
5212
5213 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5214 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5215 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5216
5217 <blockquote><pre>
5218 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5219 cd bitcoin
5220 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5221 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5222 </pre></blockquote>
5223
5224 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5225 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5226 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5227 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5228 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5229 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5230 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5231 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5232 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5233
5234 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5235 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5236 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5237
5238       </div>
5239       <div class="tags">
5240
5241
5242         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>.
5243
5244
5245       </div>
5246     </div>
5247     <div class="padding"></div>
5248
5249     <div class="entry">
5250       <div class="title">
5251         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5252       </div>
5253       <div class="date">
5254         21st December 2012
5255       </div>
5256       <div class="body">
5257         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5258 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5259 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5260 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5261 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5262 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5263 is now maintained by a
5264 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5265 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5266 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5267 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5268 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5269 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5270 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5271 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5272 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5273 Corallo in a
5274 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5275 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5276 Debian package.</p>
5277
5278 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5279 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5280 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5281 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5282 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5283 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5284 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5285 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5286 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5287 new version to unstable.
5288
5289 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5290 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5291 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5292 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5293 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5294 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5295 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5296 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5297 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5298 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5299 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5300 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5301 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5302 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5303 have not tested them.</p>
5304
5305 <p>My
5306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5307 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5308 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5309 years ago, as can be
5310 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5311 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5312 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5313 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5314 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5315 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5316 the same address as last time,
5317 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5318
5319       </div>
5320       <div class="tags">
5321
5322
5323         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>.
5324
5325
5326       </div>
5327     </div>
5328     <div class="padding"></div>
5329
5330     <div class="entry">
5331       <div class="title">
5332         <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>
5333       </div>
5334       <div class="date">
5335          7th September 2012
5336       </div>
5337       <div class="body">
5338         <p>As I
5339 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5340 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5341 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5342 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5343 repository for the project</a>.</p>
5344
5345 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5346 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5347 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5348 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
5349
5350 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5351 PostScript formats at
5352 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
5353 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
5354
5355       </div>
5356       <div class="tags">
5357
5358
5359         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>.
5360
5361
5362       </div>
5363     </div>
5364     <div class="padding"></div>
5365
5366     <div class="entry">
5367       <div class="title">
5368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
5369       </div>
5370       <div class="date">
5371         16th August 2012
5372       </div>
5373       <div class="body">
5374         <p>I dag fyller
5375 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
5376 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
5377 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
5378
5379       </div>
5380       <div class="tags">
5381
5382
5383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5384
5385
5386       </div>
5387     </div>
5388     <div class="padding"></div>
5389
5390     <div class="entry">
5391       <div class="title">
5392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5393       </div>
5394       <div class="date">
5395         24th June 2012
5396       </div>
5397       <div class="body">
5398         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5399 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5400 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5401 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5402 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5403 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5404 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5405 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5406 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5407 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5408 missing in my book.</p>
5409
5410 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5411 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5412 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5413 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5414 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5415 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5416 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5417
5418       </div>
5419       <div class="tags">
5420
5421
5422         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>.
5423
5424
5425       </div>
5426     </div>
5427     <div class="padding"></div>
5428
5429     <div class="entry">
5430       <div class="title">
5431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5432       </div>
5433       <div class="date">
5434         21st November 2011
5435       </div>
5436       <div class="body">
5437         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5438 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5439 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5440 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5441 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5442 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5443 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5444 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5445 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5446 the tools to do so.</p>
5447
5448 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5449 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5450 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5451 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5452
5453 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5454 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5455 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5456 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5457 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5458 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5459 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5460 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5461
5462 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5463 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5464 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5465
5466 <p><pre>
5467 #!/usr/bin/perl
5468 use strict;
5469 use warnings;
5470 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5471 BEGIN {
5472     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5473     my %rhelmodules = (
5474         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5475         );
5476     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5477         eval "use $module;";
5478         if ($@) {
5479             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5480             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5481             eval "use $module;";
5482         }
5483     }
5484 }
5485 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5486
5487 upgrade_dell();
5488
5489 exit 0;
5490
5491 sub run_firmware_script {
5492     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5493     unless ($script) {
5494         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5495         exit 1
5496     }
5497     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5498
5499     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5500         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5501     } else {
5502         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5503     }
5504 }
5505
5506 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5507     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5508     # Run firmware packages
5509     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5510         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5511         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5512         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5513             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5514             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5515         }
5516         closedir $dh;
5517     }
5518 }
5519
5520 sub download {
5521     my $url = shift;
5522     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5523     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5524 }
5525
5526 sub upgrade_dell {
5527     my @dirs;
5528     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5529     chomp $product;
5530
5531     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5532
5533         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5534         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5535
5536         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5537             CLEANUP => 1
5538             );
5539         chdir($tmpdir);
5540         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5541         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5542         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5543         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5544         my $fwopts = "-q";
5545         if (@paths) {
5546             for my $url (@paths) {
5547                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5548             }
5549             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5550         } else {
5551             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5552             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5553         }
5554         chdir('/');
5555     } else {
5556         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5557         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5558     }
5559 }
5560
5561 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5562     my $path = shift;
5563     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5564     download($url);
5565 }
5566
5567 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5568 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5569 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5570 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5571     my $filename = shift;
5572
5573     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5574     chomp $product;
5575     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5576
5577     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5578
5579     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5580     my @paths;
5581     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5582         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5583         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5584         my $oscode;
5585         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5586             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5587         } else {
5588             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5589         }
5590         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5591         {
5592             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5593         }
5594     }
5595     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5596         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5597
5598         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5599         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5600
5601         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5602         for my $path (@paths) {
5603             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5604                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5605             }
5606         }
5607     }
5608     return @paths;
5609 }
5610 </pre>
5611
5612 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5613 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5614 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5615 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5616 outdated.</p>
5617
5618       </div>
5619       <div class="tags">
5620
5621
5622         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>.
5623
5624
5625       </div>
5626     </div>
5627     <div class="padding"></div>
5628
5629     <div class="entry">
5630       <div class="title">
5631         <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>
5632       </div>
5633       <div class="date">
5634          4th August 2011
5635       </div>
5636       <div class="body">
5637         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5638 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5639 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
5640 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5641 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
5642 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5643 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
5644 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5645 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
5646
5647 <p><blockquote>
5648 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5649 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5650 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5651 </blockquote></p>
5652
5653 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5654 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
5655 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5656 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5657 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5658 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5659 hard to explain.</p>
5660
5661 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5662 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
5663 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5664 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5665 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5666 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5667 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5668 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5669 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5670 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5671 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5672 mode).</p>
5673
5674 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
5675 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5676 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
5677 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5678 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
5679 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
5680 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5681 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5682 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5683
5684 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5685 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
5686 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5687 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5688 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5689 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5690 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5691 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5692
5693 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5694 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
5695 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5696
5697       </div>
5698       <div class="tags">
5699
5700
5701         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>.
5702
5703
5704       </div>
5705     </div>
5706     <div class="padding"></div>
5707
5708     <div class="entry">
5709       <div class="title">
5710         <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>
5711       </div>
5712       <div class="date">
5713         30th July 2011
5714       </div>
5715       <div class="body">
5716         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5717 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
5718 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
5719 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
5720 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
5721 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
5722 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
5723 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
5724 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
5725 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
5726 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
5727 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
5728 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
5729
5730 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
5731 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
5732 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
5733 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
5734 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
5735 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
5736 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
5737 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
5738 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
5739
5740 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
5741 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
5742 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
5743 is presented.</p>
5744
5745 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
5746 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
5747 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
5748 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
5749 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
5750 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
5751 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
5752 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
5753 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
5754 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
5755 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
5756 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
5757 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
5758 find time to push this forward.</p>
5759
5760       </div>
5761       <div class="tags">
5762
5763
5764         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>.
5765
5766
5767       </div>
5768     </div>
5769     <div class="padding"></div>
5770
5771     <div class="entry">
5772       <div class="title">
5773         <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>
5774       </div>
5775       <div class="date">
5776         29th July 2011
5777       </div>
5778       <div class="body">
5779         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
5780 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
5781 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
5782 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
5783 issues.</p>
5784
5785 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
5786 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
5787 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
5788
5789 <ol>
5790
5791 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
5792 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
5793 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
5794 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
5795 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
5796 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
5797 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
5798 Debian.</li>
5799
5800 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
5801 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
5802 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
5803 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
5804 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
5805 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
5806 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
5807 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
5808 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
5809 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
5810 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
5811 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
5812 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
5813
5814 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
5815 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
5816 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
5817 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
5818 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
5819 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
5820 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
5821 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
5822 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
5823 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
5824
5825 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
5826 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
5827 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
5828 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
5829 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
5830 latter behaviour.</li>
5831
5832 </ol>
5833
5834 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
5835 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
5836 it do not matter much.</p>
5837
5838 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
5839 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
5840 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
5841
5842       </div>
5843       <div class="tags">
5844
5845
5846         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>.
5847
5848
5849       </div>
5850     </div>
5851     <div class="padding"></div>
5852
5853     <div class="entry">
5854       <div class="title">
5855         <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>
5856       </div>
5857       <div class="date">
5858         26th July 2011
5859       </div>
5860       <div class="body">
5861         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
5862 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
5863 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
5864 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
5865 security support for a few years.</p>
5866
5867 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
5868 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
5869 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
5870 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
5871 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
5872 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
5873 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
5874 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
5875 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
5876 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
5877 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
5878 easier in the future.</p>
5879
5880 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5881 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
5882 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
5883 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5884 do not have time for.</p>
5885
5886       </div>
5887       <div class="tags">
5888
5889
5890         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>.
5891
5892
5893       </div>
5894     </div>
5895     <div class="padding"></div>
5896
5897     <div class="entry">
5898       <div class="title">
5899         <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>
5900       </div>
5901       <div class="date">
5902          3rd April 2011
5903       </div>
5904       <div class="body">
5905         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
5906 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
5907 update in English.</p>
5908
5909 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
5910 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
5911 of the British service
5912 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
5913 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
5914 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
5915 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
5916 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
5917 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
5918 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
5919 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
5920 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
5921 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
5922 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
5923 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
5924 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
5925
5926 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
5927 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
5928 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
5929 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
5930 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
5931 public infrastructure.</p>
5932
5933 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
5934 such service?</p>
5935
5936       </div>
5937       <div class="tags">
5938
5939
5940         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>.
5941
5942
5943       </div>
5944     </div>
5945     <div class="padding"></div>
5946
5947     <div class="entry">
5948       <div class="title">
5949         <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>
5950       </div>
5951       <div class="date">
5952         28th January 2011
5953       </div>
5954       <div class="body">
5955         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
5956 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
5957 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
5958 available on the Internet, and check our locally
5959 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
5960 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
5961 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
5962 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
5963 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
5964 out which security holes were present in our free software
5965 collection.</p>
5966
5967 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
5968 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
5969 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
5970 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
5971 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
5972 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
5973 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
5974 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
5975 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
5976 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
5977 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
5978 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
5979 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
5980 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
5981 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
5982 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
5983
5984 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
5985 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
5986 check out, one could look up
5987 <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
5988 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
5989 The most recent one is
5990 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
5991 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
5992 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
5993
5994 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
5995 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
5996 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
5997 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
5998 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
5999 security issues out.</p>
6000
6001 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6002 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6003 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6004 RHEL is providing
6005 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6006 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6007 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6008
6009 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6010 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6011 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6012 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6013 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6014 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6015 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6016 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6017 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6018 established soon.</p>
6019
6020 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6021 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6022 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6023 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6024 for their packages.</p>
6025
6026       </div>
6027       <div class="tags">
6028
6029
6030         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>.
6031
6032
6033       </div>
6034     </div>
6035     <div class="padding"></div>
6036
6037     <div class="entry">
6038       <div class="title">
6039         <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>
6040       </div>
6041       <div class="date">
6042         23rd January 2011
6043       </div>
6044       <div class="body">
6045         <p>In the
6046 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6047 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6048 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6049 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6050 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6051 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6052 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6053 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6054 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6055 one of my machines like this:</p>
6056
6057 <pre>
6058 loaded modules:
6059 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6060 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6061 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6062 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6063 10de:03ec pata_amd
6064 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6065 1022:1103 k8temp
6066 109e:036e bttv
6067 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6068 11ab:4364 sky2
6069 </pre>
6070
6071 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6072 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6073
6074 <pre>
6075 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6076     echo loaded pci modules:
6077     (
6078         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6079         for address in * ; do
6080             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6081                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6082                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6083                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6084                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6085                     echo "$id $module"
6086                 fi
6087             fi
6088         done
6089     )
6090     echo
6091 fi
6092 </pre>
6093
6094 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6095 mappings:</p>
6096
6097 <pre>
6098 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6099     echo loaded usb modules:
6100     (
6101         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6102         for address in * ; do
6103             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6104                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6105                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6106                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6107                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6108                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6109                         echo "$id $module"
6110                     fi
6111                 fi
6112             fi
6113         done
6114     )
6115     echo
6116 fi
6117 </pre>
6118
6119 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6120 well.</p>
6121
6122       </div>
6123       <div class="tags">
6124
6125
6126         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>.
6127
6128
6129       </div>
6130     </div>
6131     <div class="padding"></div>
6132
6133     <div class="entry">
6134       <div class="title">
6135         <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>
6136       </div>
6137       <div class="date">
6138         22nd December 2010
6139       </div>
6140       <div class="body">
6141         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6142 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6143 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6144 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6145 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6146 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6147 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6148 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6149 university.</p>
6150
6151 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6152 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6153 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6154 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6155 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6156 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6157 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6158 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6159
6160 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6161 I perform on a new model.</p>
6162
6163 <ul>
6164
6165 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6166 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6167 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6168
6169 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6170 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6171
6172 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6173 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6174 reported by the program.</li>
6175
6176 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6177 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6178 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6179 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6180 normally test this by playing
6181 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6182 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6183
6184 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6185 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6186
6187 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6188 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6189
6190 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6191 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6192
6193 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6194 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6195 few.</li>
6196
6197 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6198 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6199 notice this.</li>
6200
6201 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6202 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6203 resume.</li>
6204
6205 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6206 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6207 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6208 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6209 not.</li>
6210
6211 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6212 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6213 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6214 existence.</li>
6215
6216 </ul>
6217
6218 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6219 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6220 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6221 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6222 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6223 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6224 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6225 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6226
6227       </div>
6228       <div class="tags">
6229
6230
6231         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>.
6232
6233
6234       </div>
6235     </div>
6236     <div class="padding"></div>
6237
6238     <div class="entry">
6239       <div class="title">
6240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="date">
6243         11th December 2010
6244       </div>
6245       <div class="body">
6246         <p>As I continue to explore
6247 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6248 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6249 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6250
6251 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6252 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6253 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6254 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6255 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6256 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6257 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6258 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6259 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6260 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6261 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6262 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6263 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6264 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6265 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6266 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6267 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6268 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6269 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6270 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6271
6272 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6273 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6274 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6275 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6276 If the Skolelinux foundation
6277 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6278 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6279 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6280 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6281 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6282 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6283 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6284 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6285
6286 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6287 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6288 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6289 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6290 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6291 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6292 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6293 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6294 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6295 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6296 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6297 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6298 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6299 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6300 currencies.</p>
6301
6302 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6303 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6304 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6305 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6306 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6307 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6308 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6309 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6310 BitCoins.  Check out
6311 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6312 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6313 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6314 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6315 yet.</p>
6316
6317 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6318 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6319 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6320 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6321 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6322
6323       </div>
6324       <div class="tags">
6325
6326
6327         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>.
6328
6329
6330       </div>
6331     </div>
6332     <div class="padding"></div>
6333
6334     <div class="entry">
6335       <div class="title">
6336         <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>
6337       </div>
6338       <div class="date">
6339         10th December 2010
6340       </div>
6341       <div class="body">
6342         <p>With this weeks lawless
6343 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6344 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6345 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6346 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6347 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6348 A blog post from
6349 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6350 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6351 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6352 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6353 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6354 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6355 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6356
6357 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6358 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6359 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6360 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6361 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6362 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6363 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6364 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6365 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6366 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6367
6368 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6369 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6370 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6371 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6372 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6373 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6374 you can even get
6375 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6376 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6377 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6378 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6379
6380 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6381 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6382 donations to the address
6383 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6384
6385       </div>
6386       <div class="tags">
6387
6388
6389         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>.
6390
6391
6392       </div>
6393     </div>
6394     <div class="padding"></div>
6395
6396     <div class="entry">
6397       <div class="title">
6398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6399       </div>
6400       <div class="date">
6401         27th November 2010
6402       </div>
6403       <div class="body">
6404         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6405 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6406 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6407 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6408 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6409 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6410 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6411 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6412
6413 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6414 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6415 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6416 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6417 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6418 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6419 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6420 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6421 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6422 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6423 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6424
6425 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6426 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6427 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6428 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6429 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6430 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6431 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6432 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6433 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6434 what is going on.</p>
6435
6436       </div>
6437       <div class="tags">
6438
6439
6440         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>.
6441
6442
6443       </div>
6444     </div>
6445     <div class="padding"></div>
6446
6447     <div class="entry">
6448       <div class="title">
6449         <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>
6450       </div>
6451       <div class="date">
6452         22nd November 2010
6453       </div>
6454       <div class="body">
6455         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6456 upgrade testing of the
6457 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6458 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6459 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6460 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6461
6462 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6463
6464 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6465
6466 <blockquote><p>
6467   apache2.2-bin
6468   aptdaemon
6469   baobab
6470   binfmt-support
6471   browser-plugin-gnash
6472   cheese-common
6473   cli-common
6474   cups-pk-helper
6475   dmz-cursor-theme
6476   empathy
6477   empathy-common
6478   freedesktop-sound-theme
6479   freeglut3
6480   gconf-defaults-service
6481   gdm-themes
6482   gedit-plugins
6483   geoclue
6484   geoclue-hostip
6485   geoclue-localnet
6486   geoclue-manual
6487   geoclue-yahoo
6488   gnash
6489   gnash-common
6490   gnome
6491   gnome-backgrounds
6492   gnome-cards-data
6493   gnome-codec-install
6494   gnome-core
6495   gnome-desktop-environment
6496   gnome-disk-utility
6497   gnome-screenshot
6498   gnome-search-tool
6499   gnome-session-canberra
6500   gnome-system-log
6501   gnome-themes-extras
6502   gnome-themes-more
6503   gnome-user-share
6504   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6505   gstreamer0.10-tools
6506   gtk2-engines
6507   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6508   gtk2-engines-smooth
6509   hamster-applet
6510   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6511   libapr1
6512   libaprutil1
6513   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6514   libaprutil1-ldap
6515   libart2.0-cil
6516   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6517   libboost-python1.42.0
6518   libboost-thread1.42.0
6519   libchamplain-0.4-0
6520   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6521   libcheese-gtk18
6522   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6523   libcryptui0
6524   libdiscid0
6525   libelf1
6526   libepc-1.0-2
6527   libepc-common
6528   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6529   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6530   libfreerdp0
6531   libgconf2.0-cil
6532   libgdata-common
6533   libgdata7
6534   libgdu-gtk0
6535   libgee2
6536   libgeoclue0
6537   libgexiv2-0
6538   libgif4
6539   libglade2.0-cil
6540   libglib2.0-cil
6541   libgmime2.4-cil
6542   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6543   libgnome2.24-cil
6544   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6545   libgpod-common
6546   libgpod4
6547   libgtk2.0-cil
6548   libgtkglext1
6549   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6550   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6551   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6552   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6553   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6554   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6555   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6556   libmono-security2.0-cil
6557   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6558   libmono-system2.0-cil
6559   libmtp8
6560   libmusicbrainz3-6
6561   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6562   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6563   libopal3.6.8
6564   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6565   libpt2.6.7
6566   libpython2.6
6567   librpm1
6568   librpmio1
6569   libsdl1.2debian
6570   libsrtp0
6571   libssh-4
6572   libtelepathy-farsight0
6573   libtelepathy-glib0
6574   libtidy-0.99-0
6575   media-player-info
6576   mesa-utils
6577   mono-2.0-gac
6578   mono-gac
6579   mono-runtime
6580   nautilus-sendto
6581   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6582   p7zip-full
6583   pkg-config
6584   python-aptdaemon
6585   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6586   python-axiom
6587   python-beautifulsoup
6588   python-bugbuddy
6589   python-clientform
6590   python-coherence
6591   python-configobj
6592   python-crypto
6593   python-cupshelpers
6594   python-elementtree
6595   python-epsilon
6596   python-evolution
6597   python-feedparser
6598   python-gdata
6599   python-gdbm
6600   python-gst0.10
6601   python-gtkglext1
6602   python-gtksourceview2
6603   python-httplib2
6604   python-louie
6605   python-mako
6606   python-markupsafe
6607   python-mechanize
6608   python-nevow
6609   python-notify
6610   python-opengl
6611   python-openssl
6612   python-pam
6613   python-pkg-resources
6614   python-pyasn1
6615   python-pysqlite2
6616   python-rdflib
6617   python-serial
6618   python-tagpy
6619   python-twisted-bin
6620   python-twisted-conch
6621   python-twisted-core
6622   python-twisted-web
6623   python-utidylib
6624   python-webkit
6625   python-xdg
6626   python-zope.interface
6627   remmina
6628   remmina-plugin-data
6629   remmina-plugin-rdp
6630   remmina-plugin-vnc
6631   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6632   rhythmbox-plugins
6633   rpm-common
6634   rpm2cpio
6635   seahorse-plugins
6636   shotwell
6637   software-center
6638   system-config-printer-udev
6639   telepathy-gabble
6640   telepathy-mission-control-5
6641   telepathy-salut
6642   tomboy
6643   totem
6644   totem-coherence
6645   totem-mozilla
6646   totem-plugins
6647   transmission-common
6648   xdg-user-dirs
6649   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6650   xserver-xephyr
6651 </p></blockquote>
6652
6653 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6654
6655 <blockquote><p>
6656   cheese
6657   ekiga
6658   eog
6659   epiphany-extensions
6660   evolution-exchange
6661   fast-user-switch-applet
6662   file-roller
6663   gcalctool
6664   gconf-editor
6665   gdm
6666   gedit
6667   gedit-common
6668   gnome-games
6669   gnome-games-data
6670   gnome-nettool
6671   gnome-system-tools
6672   gnome-themes
6673   gnuchess
6674   gucharmap
6675   guile-1.8-libs
6676   libavahi-ui0
6677   libdmx1
6678   libgalago3
6679   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6680   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6681   liblircclient0
6682   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6683   libspeexdsp1
6684   libsvga1
6685   rhythmbox
6686   seahorse
6687   sound-juicer
6688   system-config-printer
6689   totem-common
6690   transmission-gtk
6691   vinagre
6692   vino
6693 </p></blockquote>
6694
6695 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6696
6697 <blockquote><p>
6698   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6699 </p></blockquote>
6700
6701 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6702
6703 <blockquote><p>
6704 [nothing]
6705 </p></blockquote>
6706
6707 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6708
6709 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6710
6711 <blockquote><p>
6712   ksmserver
6713 </p></blockquote>
6714
6715 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6716
6717 <blockquote><p>
6718   kwin
6719   network-manager-kde
6720 </p></blockquote>
6721
6722 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6723
6724 <blockquote><p>
6725   arts
6726   dolphin
6727   freespacenotifier
6728   google-gadgets-gst
6729   google-gadgets-xul
6730   kappfinder
6731   kcalc
6732   kcharselect
6733   kde-core
6734   kde-plasma-desktop
6735   kde-standard
6736   kde-window-manager
6737   kdeartwork
6738   kdeartwork-emoticons
6739   kdeartwork-style
6740   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6741   kdebase
6742   kdebase-apps
6743   kdebase-workspace
6744   kdebase-workspace-bin
6745   kdebase-workspace-data
6746   kdeeject
6747   kdelibs
6748   kdeplasma-addons
6749   kdeutils
6750   kdewallpapers
6751   kdf
6752   kfloppy
6753   kgpg
6754   khelpcenter4
6755   kinfocenter
6756   konq-plugins-l10n
6757   konqueror-nsplugins
6758   kscreensaver
6759   kscreensaver-xsavers
6760   ktimer
6761   kwrite
6762   libgle3
6763   libkde4-ruby1.8
6764   libkonq5
6765   libkonq5-templates
6766   libnetpbm10
6767   libplasma-ruby
6768   libplasma-ruby1.8
6769   libqt4-ruby1.8
6770   marble-data
6771   marble-plugins
6772   netpbm
6773   nuvola-icon-theme
6774   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6775   plasma-desktop
6776   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6777   plasma-runners-addons
6778   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6779   plasma-scriptengine-python
6780   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6781   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6782   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6783   plasma-scriptengines
6784   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6785   plasma-widget-folderview
6786   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6787   ruby
6788   sweeper
6789   update-notifier-kde
6790   xscreensaver-data-extra
6791   xscreensaver-gl
6792   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6793   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6794 </p></blockquote>
6795
6796 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6797
6798 <blockquote><p>
6799   ark
6800   google-gadgets-common
6801   google-gadgets-qt
6802   htdig
6803   kate
6804   kdebase-bin
6805   kdebase-data
6806   kdepasswd
6807   kfind
6808   klipper
6809   konq-plugins
6810   konqueror
6811   ksysguard
6812   ksysguardd
6813   libarchive1
6814   libcln6
6815   libeet1
6816   libeina-svn-06
6817   libggadget-1.0-0b
6818   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6819   libgps19
6820   libkdecorations4
6821   libkephal4
6822   libkonq4
6823   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6824   libkscreensaver5
6825   libksgrd4
6826   libksignalplotter4
6827   libkunitconversion4
6828   libkwineffects1a
6829   libmarblewidget4
6830   libntrack-qt4-1
6831   libntrack0
6832   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6833   libplasmaclock4a
6834   libplasmagenericshell4
6835   libprocesscore4a
6836   libprocessui4a
6837   libqalculate5
6838   libqedje0a
6839   libqtruby4shared2
6840   libqzion0a
6841   libruby1.8
6842   libscim8c2a
6843   libsmokekdecore4-3
6844   libsmokekdeui4-3
6845   libsmokekfile3
6846   libsmokekhtml3
6847   libsmokekio3
6848   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6849   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6850   libsmokekparts3
6851   libsmokektexteditor3
6852   libsmokekutils3
6853   libsmokenepomuk3
6854   libsmokephonon3
6855   libsmokeplasma3
6856   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6857   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6858   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6859   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6860   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6861   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6862   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6863   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6864   libsmokeqttest4-3
6865   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6866   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6867   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6868   libsmokesolid3
6869   libsmokesoprano3
6870   libtaskmanager4a
6871   libtidy-0.99-0
6872   libweather-ion4a
6873   libxklavier16
6874   libxxf86misc1
6875   okteta
6876   oxygencursors
6877   plasma-dataengines-addons
6878   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6879   plasma-widget-lancelot
6880   plasma-widgets-addons
6881   plasma-widgets-workspace
6882   polkit-kde-1
6883   ruby1.8
6884   systemsettings
6885   update-notifier-common
6886 </p></blockquote>
6887
6888 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6889 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6890 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6891 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6892
6893       </div>
6894       <div class="tags">
6895
6896
6897         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>.
6898
6899
6900       </div>
6901     </div>
6902     <div class="padding"></div>
6903
6904     <div class="entry">
6905       <div class="title">
6906         <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>
6907       </div>
6908       <div class="date">
6909         22nd November 2010
6910       </div>
6911       <div class="body">
6912         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6913 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6914 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6915 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6916 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6917 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6918 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6919 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6920 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6921
6922 <p>I found
6923 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6924 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6925 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6926 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6927 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6928 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6929
6930 <pre>
6931 #!/bin/sh
6932
6933 # Based on
6934 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6935
6936 set -e
6937 set -x
6938
6939 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6940     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6941     exit 1
6942 else
6943     host="$1"
6944 fi
6945
6946 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6947     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6948     exit 1
6949 fi
6950
6951 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6952 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6953 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6954 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6955
6956 img=$host.img
6957 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6958 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6959
6960 parted $img mklabel msdos
6961 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6962 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6963 parted $img set 1 boot on
6964
6965 modprobe dm-mod
6966 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6967 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6968
6969 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6970 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6971 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6972
6973 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6974 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6975 </pre>
6976
6977 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6978 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6979
6980 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6981 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6982 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6983 seem to work just fine.</p>
6984
6985       </div>
6986       <div class="tags">
6987
6988
6989         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>.
6990
6991
6992       </div>
6993     </div>
6994     <div class="padding"></div>
6995
6996     <div class="entry">
6997       <div class="title">
6998         <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>
6999       </div>
7000       <div class="date">
7001         20th November 2010
7002       </div>
7003       <div class="body">
7004         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7005 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7006 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7007 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7008
7009 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7010 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7011 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7012
7013 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7014
7015 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7016
7017 <blockquote><p>
7018   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7019   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7020   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7021   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7022   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7023   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7024   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7025   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7026   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7027   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7028   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7029   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7030   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7031   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7032   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7033   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7034   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7035   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7036   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7037   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7038   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7039   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7040   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7041   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7042   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7043   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7044   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7045   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7046   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7047   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7048   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7049   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7050   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7051   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7052   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7053   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7054   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7055   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7056   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7057   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7058   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7059   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7060   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7061   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7062   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7063   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7064   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7065   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7066   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7067   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7068   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7069   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7070   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7071   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7072   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7073   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7074   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7075   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7076   zip
7077 </p></blockquote>
7078
7079 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7080
7081 <blockquote><p>
7082   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7083   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7084   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7085   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7086   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7087   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7088   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7089   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7090   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7091   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7092   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7093   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7094   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7095   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7096   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7097   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7098   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7099   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7100   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7101   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7102   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7103   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7104   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7105   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7106   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7107   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7108   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7109   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7110   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7111 </p></blockquote>
7112
7113 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7114
7115 <blockquote><p>
7116   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7117 </p></blockquote>
7118
7119 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7120
7121 <blockquote><p>
7122 [nothing]
7123 </p></blockquote>
7124
7125 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7126
7127 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7128
7129 <blockquote><p>
7130   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7131   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7132   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7133   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7134   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7135   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7136   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7137   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7138   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7139   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7140   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7141   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7142   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7143   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7144   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7145   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7146   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7147   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7148   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7149   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7150   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7151   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7152   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7153   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7154   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7155   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7156   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7157   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7158   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7159   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7160 </p></blockquote>
7161
7162 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7163
7164 <blockquote><p>
7165   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7166   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7167   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7168   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7169   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7170   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7171   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7172   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7173   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7174   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7175   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7176   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7177   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7178   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7179   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7180   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7181   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7182   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7183   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7184   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7185   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7186   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7187   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7188   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7189   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7190   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7191   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7192   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7193   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7194   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7195   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7196   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7197   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7198 </p></blockquote>
7199
7200 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7201
7202 <blockquote><p>
7203   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7204   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7205   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7206   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7207   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7208   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7209   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7210 </p></blockquote>
7211
7212 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7213
7214 <blockquote><p>
7215   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7216 </p></blockquote>
7217
7218       </div>
7219       <div class="tags">
7220
7221
7222         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>.
7223
7224
7225       </div>
7226     </div>
7227     <div class="padding"></div>
7228
7229     <div class="entry">
7230       <div class="title">
7231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7232       </div>
7233       <div class="date">
7234         20th November 2010
7235       </div>
7236       <div class="body">
7237         <p>Answering
7238 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7239 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7240 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7241 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7242 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7243 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7244 releases out more often.</p>
7245
7246 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7247 I have considered setting up a <a
7248 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7249 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7250 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7251 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7252 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7253 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7254 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7255 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7256 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7257 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7258 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7259 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7260
7261       </div>
7262       <div class="tags">
7263
7264
7265         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>.
7266
7267
7268       </div>
7269     </div>
7270     <div class="padding"></div>
7271
7272     <div class="entry">
7273       <div class="title">
7274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7275       </div>
7276       <div class="date">
7277          9th November 2010
7278       </div>
7279       <div class="body">
7280         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7281
7282 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7283 3D linked in from
7284 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7285 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7286
7287       </div>
7288       <div class="tags">
7289
7290
7291         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>.
7292
7293
7294       </div>
7295     </div>
7296     <div class="padding"></div>
7297
7298     <div class="entry">
7299       <div class="title">
7300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7301       </div>
7302       <div class="date">
7303         24th October 2010
7304       </div>
7305       <div class="body">
7306         <p>Some updates.</p>
7307
7308 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7309 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7310 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7311 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7312 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7313 :)</p>
7314
7315 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7316 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7317 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7318 It is called
7319 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7320 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7321 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7322 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7323 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7324 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7325
7326 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7327 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7328 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7329 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7330 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7331 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7332 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7333 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7334 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7335 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7336
7337       </div>
7338       <div class="tags">
7339
7340
7341         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>.
7342
7343
7344       </div>
7345     </div>
7346     <div class="padding"></div>
7347
7348     <div class="entry">
7349       <div class="title">
7350         <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>
7351       </div>
7352       <div class="date">
7353          4th September 2010
7354       </div>
7355       <div class="body">
7356         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7357 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7358 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7359 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7360 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7361 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7362 installed.</p>
7363
7364 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7365 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7366 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7367 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7368 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7369 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7370 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7371 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7372 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7373
7374 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7375 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7376 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7377 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7378 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7379 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7380 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7381 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7382 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7383 pages they want to visit.</p>
7384
7385 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7386 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7387 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7388 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7389 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7390 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7391 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7392 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7393 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7394 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7395 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7396
7397       </div>
7398       <div class="tags">
7399
7400
7401         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>.
7402
7403
7404       </div>
7405     </div>
7406     <div class="padding"></div>
7407
7408     <div class="entry">
7409       <div class="title">
7410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7411       </div>
7412       <div class="date">
7413         27th July 2010
7414       </div>
7415       <div class="body">
7416         <p>I discovered this while doing
7417 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7418 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7419 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7420 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7421 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7422
7423 <p>An example is from todays
7424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7425 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7426 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7427 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7428 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7429 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7430 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7431
7432 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7433
7434 <blockquote><pre>
7435 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7436  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7437   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7438 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7439  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7440 </pre></blockquote>
7441
7442 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7443 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7444 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7445 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7446 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7447 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7448 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7449 of dependency loops.</p>
7450
7451 <p>Thanks to
7452 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7453 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7454 dependencies
7455 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7456 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7457
7458 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7459 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7460 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7461 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7462 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7463 it.</p>
7464
7465       </div>
7466       <div class="tags">
7467
7468
7469         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>.
7470
7471
7472       </div>
7473     </div>
7474     <div class="padding"></div>
7475
7476     <div class="entry">
7477       <div class="title">
7478         <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>
7479       </div>
7480       <div class="date">
7481         17th July 2010
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="body">
7484         <p>This is a
7485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
7486 on my
7487 <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
7488 work</a> on
7489 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7490 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
7491
7492 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7493 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7494 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
7495 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
7496
7497 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7498 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7499 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
7500
7501 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
7502
7503 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7504 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7505 the web.
7506
7507 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7508 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7509 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7510 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7511 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7512 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
7513
7514 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7515 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7516 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7517 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7518 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7519 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
7520 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7521 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7522 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7523 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7524 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7525 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
7526 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7527 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7528 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
7529 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
7530
7531 <blockquote><pre>
7532 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7533   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7534   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7535   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7536   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7537   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7538   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7539
7540 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7541   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7542   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7543   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7544   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7545   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7546 </pre></blockquote>
7547
7548 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7549 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7550 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
7551 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7552 also exist.</p>
7553
7554 <blockquote><pre>
7555 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7556 objectclass: top
7557 objectclass: dnsdomain
7558 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7559 dc: tjener
7560 arecord: 10.0.2.2
7561 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7562
7563 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7564 objectclass: top
7565 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7566 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7567 dc: 2
7568 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7569 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
7570 </pre></blockquote>
7571
7572 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
7573 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
7574 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
7575 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
7576 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
7577 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
7578 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
7579 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
7580 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
7581 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
7582 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
7583 instead.</p>
7584
7585 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
7586 like this:</p>
7587
7588 <blockquote><pre>
7589 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7590   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7591   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7592   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7593   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7594   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7595
7596 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7597   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
7598 </pre></blockquote>
7599
7600 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
7601 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
7602 reverse lookups.</p>
7603
7604 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
7605 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
7606 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
7607 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
7608
7609 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
7610 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
7611 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
7612
7613 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
7614 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
7615 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
7616 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
7617 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
7618
7619 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
7620 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
7621 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
7622 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
7623 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
7624
7625 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
7626 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
7627 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
7628 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
7629 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
7630 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
7631
7632 <blockquote><pre>
7633 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
7634     SUP top
7635     AUXILIARY
7636     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
7637           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
7638           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
7639           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
7640           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
7641     ))
7642 </pre></blockquote>
7643
7644 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
7645 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
7646 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
7647 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
7648 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
7649 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
7650
7651 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
7652
7653 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
7654 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
7655 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
7656 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
7657 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
7658
7659 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
7660 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
7661 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
7662 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
7663
7664 <blockquote><pre>
7665 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
7666 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
7667 </pre></blockquote>
7668
7669 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
7670 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
7671 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
7672 search result is this entry:</p>
7673
7674 <blockquote><pre>
7675 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7676 cn: dhcp
7677 objectClass: top
7678 objectClass: dhcpServer
7679 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7680 </pre></blockquote>
7681
7682 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
7683 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
7684 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
7685 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
7686 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
7687 The search result is this entry:</p>
7688
7689 <blockquote><pre>
7690 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7691 cn: DHCP Config
7692 objectClass: top
7693 objectClass: dhcpService
7694 objectClass: dhcpOptions
7695 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7696 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
7697 dhcpStatements: authoritative
7698 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
7699 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
7700 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
7701 </pre></blockquote>
7702
7703 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
7704 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
7705 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
7706 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
7707 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
7708 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
7709 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
7710 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
7711 related computer objects.</p>
7712
7713 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
7714 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
7715 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
7716 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
7717 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
7718 like:</p>
7719
7720 <blockquote><pre>
7721 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7722 cn: hostname
7723 objectClass: top
7724 objectClass: dhcpHost
7725 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7726 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
7727 </pre></blockquote>
7728
7729 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
7730 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
7731 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
7732 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
7733 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
7734 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
7735 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
7736 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
7737 structural object class.
7738
7739 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
7740
7741 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
7742 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
7743 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
7744 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
7745 in the configuration.</p>
7746
7747 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
7748 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
7749 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
7750 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
7751 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
7752 structure.</p>
7753
7754 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
7755 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
7756
7757 <blockquote><pre>
7758 ou=services
7759   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
7760     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
7761     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7762       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7763         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7764     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7765       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7766         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7767     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
7768       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
7769 </pre></blockquote>
7770
7771 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
7772 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
7773 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
7774 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
7775
7776 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
7777 like this:</p>
7778
7779 <blockquote><pre>
7780 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7781 dc: hostname
7782 objectClass: top
7783 objectClass: dhcpHost
7784 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7785 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
7786 associateddomain: hostname.intern
7787 arecord: 10.11.12.13
7788 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7789 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
7790 </pre></blockquote>
7791
7792 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
7793 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
7794 auxiliary object class.</p>
7795
7796       </div>
7797       <div class="tags">
7798
7799
7800         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>.
7801
7802
7803       </div>
7804     </div>
7805     <div class="padding"></div>
7806
7807     <div class="entry">
7808       <div class="title">
7809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
7810       </div>
7811       <div class="date">
7812         14th July 2010
7813       </div>
7814       <div class="body">
7815         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
7816 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
7817 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
7818 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
7819 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
7820
7821 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
7822 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
7823
7824 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
7825 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
7826 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
7827 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
7828 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
7829 to a slave DNS server.</p>
7830
7831 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
7832 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
7833 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
7834 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
7835 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
7836 seem to work.</p>
7837
7838 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
7839 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
7840 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
7841 this:</p>
7842
7843 <blockquote><pre>
7844   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7845   cn: hostname
7846   objectClass: dhcphost
7847   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7848   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
7849   associateddomain: hostname.intern
7850   arecord: 10.11.12.13
7851   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7852   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
7853   ldapconfigsound: Y
7854 </pre></blockquote>
7855
7856 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
7857 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
7858 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
7859 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
7860
7861 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
7862 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
7863 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
7864 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
7865 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
7866 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
7867 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
7868 might be a good place to put it.</p>
7869
7870 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7871 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7872
7873       </div>
7874       <div class="tags">
7875
7876
7877         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>.
7878
7879
7880       </div>
7881     </div>
7882     <div class="padding"></div>
7883
7884     <div class="entry">
7885       <div class="title">
7886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
7887       </div>
7888       <div class="date">
7889         11th July 2010
7890       </div>
7891       <div class="body">
7892         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
7893 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
7894 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
7895 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
7896
7897 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
7898 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
7899 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
7900 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
7901 LTSP clients.</p>
7902
7903 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
7904 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
7905 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
7906
7907 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
7908 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
7909 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
7910
7911 <blockquote><pre>
7912 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
7913 #
7914 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
7915 #
7916 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
7917 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
7918 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
7919 #
7920 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
7921 # existence of attribute names.
7922 #
7923 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
7924 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
7925 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
7926 #
7927 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
7928 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
7929 #
7930 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
7931 #     SUP top
7932 #     AUXILIARY
7933 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
7934
7935 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
7936 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
7937     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
7938     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
7939         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
7940         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
7941             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
7942             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
7943             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
7944             # bass value on to clients
7945             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
7946         done
7947     done
7948 fi
7949 </pre></blockquote>
7950
7951 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
7952 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
7953 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
7954 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
7955 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
7956
7957 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7958 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7959
7960 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
7961 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
7962 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
7963 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
7964 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
7965 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
7966
7967       </div>
7968       <div class="tags">
7969
7970
7971         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>.
7972
7973
7974       </div>
7975     </div>
7976     <div class="padding"></div>
7977
7978     <div class="entry">
7979       <div class="title">
7980         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7981       </div>
7982       <div class="date">
7983          9th July 2010
7984       </div>
7985       <div class="body">
7986         <p>Since
7987 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
7988 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
7989 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
7990 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
7991 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
7992 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
7993 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
7994 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
7995 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
7996 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
7997 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
7998 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
7999 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8000
8001       </div>
8002       <div class="tags">
8003
8004
8005         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>.
8006
8007
8008       </div>
8009     </div>
8010     <div class="padding"></div>
8011
8012     <div class="entry">
8013       <div class="title">
8014         <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>
8015       </div>
8016       <div class="date">
8017          3rd July 2010
8018       </div>
8019       <div class="body">
8020         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8021 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8022 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8023 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8024 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8025 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8026 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8027 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8028
8029 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8030 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8031 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8032 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8033 publish the difference.</p>
8034
8035 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8036
8037 <blockquote><p>
8038   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8039   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8040   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8041   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8042   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8043   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8044   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8045   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8046 </p></blockquote>
8047
8048 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8049
8050 <blockquote><p>
8051   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8052   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8053   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8054   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8055   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8056   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8057   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8058   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8059   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8060   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8061   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8062   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8063   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8064   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8065   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8066   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8067   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8068   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8069   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8070   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8071 </p></blockquote>
8072
8073 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8074
8075 <blockquote><p>
8076   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8077   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8078   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8079   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8080   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8081   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8082   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8083   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8084   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8085   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8086   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8087   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8088   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8089   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8090   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8091   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8092   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8093   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8094   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8095   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8096   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8097 </p></blockquote>
8098
8099 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8100
8101 <blockquote><p>
8102   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8103   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8104   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8105 </p></blockquote>
8106
8107 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8108 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8109 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8110 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8111 the difference somewhat.
8112
8113       </div>
8114       <div class="tags">
8115
8116
8117         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>.
8118
8119
8120       </div>
8121     </div>
8122     <div class="padding"></div>
8123
8124     <div class="entry">
8125       <div class="title">
8126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8127       </div>
8128       <div class="date">
8129         28th June 2010
8130       </div>
8131       <div class="body">
8132         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8133 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8134 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8135 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8136 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8137 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8138 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8139 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8140 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8141 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8142
8143 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8144 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8145 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8146 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8147 released.</p>
8148
8149 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8150 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8151 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8152 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8153
8154 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8155 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8156
8157 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8158 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8159 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8160 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8161 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8162
8163       </div>
8164       <div class="tags">
8165
8166
8167         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>.
8168
8169
8170       </div>
8171     </div>
8172     <div class="padding"></div>
8173
8174     <div class="entry">
8175       <div class="title">
8176         <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>
8177       </div>
8178       <div class="date">
8179         24th June 2010
8180       </div>
8181       <div class="body">
8182         <p>A while back, I
8183 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8184 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8185 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8186 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8187
8188 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8189 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8190 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8191 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8192
8193 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8194 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8195 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8196 Debian Edu.</p>
8197
8198 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8199 the
8200 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8201 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8202 available today from IETF.</p>
8203
8204 <pre>
8205 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
8206 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
8207 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
8208  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8209         NAME 'dhcpHost'
8210         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8211 -       SUP top
8212 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
8213         MUST cn
8214         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8215         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8216 </pre>
8217
8218 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8219 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8220 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
8221
8222 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8223 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8224
8225       </div>
8226       <div class="tags">
8227
8228
8229         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>.
8230
8231
8232       </div>
8233     </div>
8234     <div class="padding"></div>
8235
8236     <div class="entry">
8237       <div class="title">
8238         <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>
8239       </div>
8240       <div class="date">
8241         16th June 2010
8242       </div>
8243       <div class="body">
8244         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8245 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
8246 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8247 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8248 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8249 this:
8250
8251 <blockquote><pre>
8252 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8253 tasksel --new-install
8254 </pre></blockquote>
8255
8256 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8257 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8258 any output what so ever.
8259
8260 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8261 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8262 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8263 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8264 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8265 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
8266 code like this:
8267
8268 <blockquote><pre>
8269 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8270 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8271 $cmd
8272 </pre></blockquote>
8273
8274 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
8275 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8276 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8277 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8278 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8279 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8280 installation.</p>
8281
8282 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8283 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8284 like this.</p>
8285
8286       </div>
8287       <div class="tags">
8288
8289
8290         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>.
8291
8292
8293       </div>
8294     </div>
8295     <div class="padding"></div>
8296
8297     <div class="entry">
8298       <div class="title">
8299         <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>
8300       </div>
8301       <div class="date">
8302         13th June 2010
8303       </div>
8304       <div class="body">
8305         <p>My
8306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
8307 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8308 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8309 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8310 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8311 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
8312 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8313
8314 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8315 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
8316 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8317 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8318 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8319 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8320 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8321 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8322
8323 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8324 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8325 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8326 too surprising.</p>
8327
8328 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8329 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
8330 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
8331 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8332 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8333 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
8334 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8335 continue.</p>
8336
8337 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8338 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8339   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8340   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8341   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8342   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8343   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8344   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8345   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8346   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8347   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8348   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8349   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8350   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8351   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8352   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8353   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8354   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8355   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8356   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8357   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8358   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8359   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8360   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8361   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8362   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8363   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8364   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8365   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
8366   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
8367
8368 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
8369
8370 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
8371   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
8372   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
8373   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
8374   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8375   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
8376   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
8377   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
8378   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
8379   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
8380   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8381   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
8382   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8383   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
8384   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
8385   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8386   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8387   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8388   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8389   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8390   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8391   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8392   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8393   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8394   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8395   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8396   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8397   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8398   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8399   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8400   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8401   zip</p>
8402
8403 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8404
8405 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8406   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8407   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8408   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8409   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8410   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8411   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8412   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8413   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8414   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8415   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8416   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8417   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8418   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8419   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8420   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8421   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8422   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8423   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8424   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8425   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8426   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8427   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8428   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8429   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8430   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8431   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8432   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8433
8434 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8435 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8436   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8437   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8438   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8439   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8440   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8441   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8442   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8443   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8444   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8445   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8446   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8447   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8448   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8449   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8450   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8451   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8452   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8453   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8454   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8455   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8456   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8457   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8458   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8459   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8460   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8461   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8462   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8463   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8464   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8465   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8466   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8467   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8468   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8469   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8470   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8471   xulrunner-1.9</p>
8472
8473
8474       </div>
8475       <div class="tags">
8476
8477
8478         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>.
8479
8480
8481       </div>
8482     </div>
8483     <div class="padding"></div>
8484
8485     <div class="entry">
8486       <div class="title">
8487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8488       </div>
8489       <div class="date">
8490         11th June 2010
8491       </div>
8492       <div class="body">
8493         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8494 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
8495 have been discovered and reported in the process
8496 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8497 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8498 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
8499 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8500 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8501
8502 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8503 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8504 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8505 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8506 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8507 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8508
8509 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8510 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8511 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8512 is created.  The bug report
8513 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8514 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8515 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
8516 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8517 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
8518 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
8519 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8520 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8521 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
8522 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8523 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8524 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8525 Debian Squeeze.</p>
8526
8527 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
8528 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8529 trick:</p>
8530
8531 <blockquote><pre>
8532 #!/bin/sh
8533 set -ex
8534
8535 if [ "$1" ] ; then
8536     desktop=$1
8537 else
8538     desktop=gnome
8539 fi
8540
8541 from=lenny
8542 to=squeeze
8543
8544 exec &lt; /dev/null
8545 unset LANG
8546 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8547 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8548 fuser -mv .
8549 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8550 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8551 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
8552 #!/bin/sh
8553 exit 101
8554 EOF
8555 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8556 exit_cleanup() {
8557     umount $tmpdir/proc
8558 }
8559 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8560 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8561 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8562
8563 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8564
8565 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
8566 # to return the correct answers.
8567 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8568     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
8569
8570 # Include the desktop and laptop task
8571 for test in desktop laptop ; do
8572     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
8573 #!/bin/sh
8574 exit 2
8575 EOF
8576     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
8577 done
8578
8579 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8580 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
8581 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
8582 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
8583
8584 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
8585 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8586 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8587 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
8588 fuser -mv
8589 </pre></blockquote>
8590
8591 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
8592 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
8593 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
8594 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
8595 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
8596 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
8597
8598 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
8599 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
8600 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
8601 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
8602 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
8603 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
8604 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
8605
8606 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
8607 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
8608 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
8609 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
8610 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
8611 packages.</p>
8612
8613       </div>
8614       <div class="tags">
8615
8616
8617         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>.
8618
8619
8620       </div>
8621     </div>
8622     <div class="padding"></div>
8623
8624     <div class="entry">
8625       <div class="title">
8626         <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>
8627       </div>
8628       <div class="date">
8629          6th June 2010
8630       </div>
8631       <div class="body">
8632         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
8633 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
8634 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
8635 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
8636 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
8637 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
8638 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
8639
8640 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
8641 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
8642 COLUMNS):</p>
8643
8644 <blockquote><pre>
8645 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
8646 previous=N
8647 PREVLEVEL=
8648 RUNLEVEL=
8649 runlevel=S
8650 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
8651 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
8652 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
8653 </pre></blockquote>
8654
8655 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
8656 script.</p>
8657
8658 <blockquote><pre>
8659 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
8660 previous=N
8661 PREVLEVEL=N
8662 RUNLEVEL=S
8663 runlevel=S
8664 </pre></blockquote>
8665
8666 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
8667 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
8668 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
8669
8670 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
8671 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
8672 choice.</p>
8673
8674       </div>
8675       <div class="tags">
8676
8677
8678         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>.
8679
8680
8681       </div>
8682     </div>
8683     <div class="padding"></div>
8684
8685     <div class="entry">
8686       <div class="title">
8687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
8688       </div>
8689       <div class="date">
8690          6th June 2010
8691       </div>
8692       <div class="body">
8693         <p>Via the
8694 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
8695 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
8696 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
8697 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
8698 following the standards wars of today.</p>
8699
8700       </div>
8701       <div class="tags">
8702
8703
8704         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>.
8705
8706
8707       </div>
8708     </div>
8709     <div class="padding"></div>
8710
8711     <div class="entry">
8712       <div class="title">
8713         <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>
8714       </div>
8715       <div class="date">
8716          3rd June 2010
8717       </div>
8718       <div class="body">
8719         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
8720 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
8721 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
8722 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
8723 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
8724
8725 <blockquote><pre>
8726 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
8727   vendor                    count
8728   Dell Computer Corporation     1
8729     PowerEdge 1750              1
8730   IBM                           1
8731     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
8732   Intel                         2
8733   [no-dmi-info]                 3
8734 maintainer:~#
8735 </pre></blockquote>
8736
8737 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
8738 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
8739 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
8740 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
8741 option to list the individual machines.</p>
8742
8743 <p>A larger list is
8744 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
8745 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
8746 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
8747 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
8748 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
8749 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
8750 collector.</p>
8751
8752       </div>
8753       <div class="tags">
8754
8755
8756         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>.
8757
8758
8759       </div>
8760     </div>
8761     <div class="padding"></div>
8762
8763     <div class="entry">
8764       <div class="title">
8765         <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>
8766       </div>
8767       <div class="date">
8768          1st June 2010
8769       </div>
8770       <div class="body">
8771         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
8772 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
8773 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
8774 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
8775 wait.</p>
8776
8777 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
8778 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
8779 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
8780 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
8781 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
8782 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
8783
8784 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
8785 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
8786 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
8787 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
8788 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
8789 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
8790 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
8791 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
8792
8793 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
8794
8795       </div>
8796       <div class="tags">
8797
8798
8799         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>.
8800
8801
8802       </div>
8803     </div>
8804     <div class="padding"></div>
8805
8806     <div class="entry">
8807       <div class="title">
8808         <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>
8809       </div>
8810       <div class="date">
8811         27th May 2010
8812       </div>
8813       <div class="body">
8814         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
8815 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
8816 issues are known and should be solved:
8817
8818 <p><ul>
8819
8820 <li>The wicd package seen to
8821 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
8822 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
8823 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
8824 seem to be on the case.</li>
8825
8826 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
8827 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
8828 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
8829 maintainer is on the case.</li>
8830
8831 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
8832 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
8833 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
8834 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
8835 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
8836 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
8837 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
8838 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
8839
8840 </ul></p>
8841
8842 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
8843 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
8844 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
8845 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
8846
8847 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8848 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8849 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8850 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8851
8852 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
8853
8854       </div>
8855       <div class="tags">
8856
8857
8858         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>.
8859
8860
8861       </div>
8862     </div>
8863     <div class="padding"></div>
8864
8865     <div class="entry">
8866       <div class="title">
8867         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
8868       </div>
8869       <div class="date">
8870         22nd May 2010
8871       </div>
8872       <div class="body">
8873         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
8874 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
8875 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
8876 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
8877
8878 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
8879 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
8880 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
8881 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
8882 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
8883 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
8884 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
8885 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
8886 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
8887 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
8888 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
8889 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
8890 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
8891 going to work.</p>
8892
8893 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
8894 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
8895 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
8896 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
8897 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
8898 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
8899 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
8900 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
8901 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
8902 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
8903 Edu.</p>
8904
8905 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
8906 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
8907 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
8908 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
8909 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
8910 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
8911
8912 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
8913 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
8914
8915       </div>
8916       <div class="tags">
8917
8918
8919         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>.
8920
8921
8922       </div>
8923     </div>
8924     <div class="padding"></div>
8925
8926     <div class="entry">
8927       <div class="title">
8928         <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>
8929       </div>
8930       <div class="date">
8931         14th May 2010
8932       </div>
8933       <div class="body">
8934         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
8935 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
8936 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
8937 expected, if I am to believe the
8938 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8939 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
8940 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
8941 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
8942 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
8943 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
8944 version.</p>
8945
8946 More information about
8947 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8948 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
8949 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
8950 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8951
8952 <blockquote><pre>
8953 CONCURRENCY=none
8954 </pre></blockquote>
8955
8956 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8957 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8958 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8959 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8960
8961       </div>
8962       <div class="tags">
8963
8964
8965         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>.
8966
8967
8968       </div>
8969     </div>
8970     <div class="padding"></div>
8971
8972     <div class="entry">
8973       <div class="title">
8974         <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>
8975       </div>
8976       <div class="date">
8977         14th May 2010
8978       </div>
8979       <div class="body">
8980         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
8981 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
8982 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
8983 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
8984 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
8985 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
8986 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
8987 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
8988
8989 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
8990 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
8991 this on the collector host:</p>
8992
8993 <blockquote><pre>
8994 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
8995 </pre></blockquote>
8996
8997 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
8998 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
8999
9000 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9001 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9002 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9003 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9004 written yet.</p>
9005
9006       </div>
9007       <div class="tags">
9008
9009
9010         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>.
9011
9012
9013       </div>
9014     </div>
9015     <div class="padding"></div>
9016
9017     <div class="entry">
9018       <div class="title">
9019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9020       </div>
9021       <div class="date">
9022         13th May 2010
9023       </div>
9024       <div class="body">
9025         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9026 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9027 has been
9028 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9029
9030 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9031 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9032 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9033 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9034 based boot system.  Tollef is
9035 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9036 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9037 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9038 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9039 at the moment do not.</p>
9040
9041 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9042 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9043 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9044 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9045 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9046 way forward.</p>
9047
9048 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9049 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9050 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9051 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9052 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9053 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9054 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9055 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9056 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9057
9058       </div>
9059       <div class="tags">
9060
9061
9062         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>.
9063
9064
9065       </div>
9066     </div>
9067     <div class="padding"></div>
9068
9069     <div class="entry">
9070       <div class="title">
9071         <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>
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="date">
9074          6th May 2010
9075       </div>
9076       <div class="body">
9077         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9078 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9079 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9080 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9081 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9082 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9083 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9084
9085 <blockquote><pre>
9086 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9087 </pre></blockquote>
9088
9089 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9090 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9091 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9092 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9093 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9094 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9095 make this happen.</p>
9096
9097 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9098 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9099 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9100 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9101 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9102
9103 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9104 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9105 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9106 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9107
9108 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9109 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9110 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9111 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9112
9113       </div>
9114       <div class="tags">
9115
9116
9117         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>.
9118
9119
9120       </div>
9121     </div>
9122     <div class="padding"></div>
9123
9124     <div class="entry">
9125       <div class="title">
9126         <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>
9127       </div>
9128       <div class="date">
9129         27th July 2009
9130       </div>
9131       <div class="body">
9132         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9133 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9134 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9135 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9136 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9137 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9138 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9139
9140 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9141 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9142 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9143
9144       </div>
9145       <div class="tags">
9146
9147
9148         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>.
9149
9150
9151       </div>
9152     </div>
9153     <div class="padding"></div>
9154
9155     <div class="entry">
9156       <div class="title">
9157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9158       </div>
9159       <div class="date">
9160         22nd July 2009
9161       </div>
9162       <div class="body">
9163         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9164 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9165 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9166 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9167 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9168 the package up to date.</p>
9169
9170 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9171 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9172 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9173 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9174 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9175 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9176 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9177 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9178 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9179 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9180 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9181 working on the future release.</p>
9182
9183 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9184 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9185
9186       </div>
9187       <div class="tags">
9188
9189
9190         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>.
9191
9192
9193       </div>
9194     </div>
9195     <div class="padding"></div>
9196
9197     <div class="entry">
9198       <div class="title">
9199         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9200       </div>
9201       <div class="date">
9202         24th June 2009
9203       </div>
9204       <div class="body">
9205         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9206 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9207 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
9208 funded
9209 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9210 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
9211 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9212 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9213 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9214 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
9215
9216 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9217 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
9218 boot:</p>
9219
9220 <ul>
9221
9222 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
9223
9224 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9225    clock is in UTC.</li>
9226
9227 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9228    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9229    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
9230
9231 </ul>
9232
9233 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9234 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9235 Villegas</a>.
9236
9237 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9238 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
9239 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
9240 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9241 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9242 using this.</p>
9243
9244 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9245 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9246 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9247 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9248 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
9249 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9250 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
9251
9252       </div>
9253       <div class="tags">
9254
9255
9256         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>.
9257
9258
9259       </div>
9260     </div>
9261     <div class="padding"></div>
9262
9263     <div class="entry">
9264       <div class="title">
9265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
9266       </div>
9267       <div class="date">
9268         17th May 2009
9269       </div>
9270       <div class="body">
9271         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9272 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9273 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9274 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
9275 dager siden kom
9276 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9277 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9278 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9279 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9280 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
9281
9282 <blockquote>
9283 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
9284 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9285 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9286 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9287 </blockquote>
9288
9289 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
9290 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9291 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
9292 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9293 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
9294
9295 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
9296 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9297 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
9298
9299       </div>
9300       <div class="tags">
9301
9302
9303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9304
9305
9306       </div>
9307     </div>
9308     <div class="padding"></div>
9309
9310     <div class="entry">
9311       <div class="title">
9312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
9313       </div>
9314       <div class="date">
9315          7th May 2009
9316       </div>
9317       <div class="body">
9318         <p>Kom over
9319 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9320 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
9321 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9322 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
9323 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
9324 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
9325 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
9326
9327       </div>
9328       <div class="tags">
9329
9330
9331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9332
9333
9334       </div>
9335     </div>
9336     <div class="padding"></div>
9337
9338     <div class="entry">
9339       <div class="title">
9340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
9341       </div>
9342       <div class="date">
9343          2nd May 2009
9344       </div>
9345       <div class="body">
9346         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
9347 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
9348 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
9349 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
9350 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
9351 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
9352 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
9353 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
9354 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
9355 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
9356 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
9357 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
9358 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
9359 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
9360 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
9361 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
9362 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
9363 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
9364 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
9365 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
9366
9367 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
9368 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
9369 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
9370 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
9371 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
9372 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
9373 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
9374 betydelige.</p>
9375
9376       </div>
9377       <div class="tags">
9378
9379
9380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9381
9382
9383       </div>
9384     </div>
9385     <div class="padding"></div>
9386
9387     <div class="entry">
9388       <div class="title">
9389         <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>
9390       </div>
9391       <div class="date">
9392          2nd May 2009
9393       </div>
9394       <div class="body">
9395         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9396 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9397 do not yet know them.</p>
9398
9399 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9400 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9401 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9402 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9403 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9404 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9405 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9406 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9407 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9408 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9409 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9410
9411 <p>The second one is
9412 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9413 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9414 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9415 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9416 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9417 and the company behind it is running
9418 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9419 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9420 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9421 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9422 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9423 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9424 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9425 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9426
9427 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9428 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9429 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9430 surrounded by today.</p>
9431
9432       </div>
9433       <div class="tags">
9434
9435
9436         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>.
9437
9438
9439       </div>
9440     </div>
9441     <div class="padding"></div>
9442
9443     <div class="entry">
9444       <div class="title">
9445         <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>
9446       </div>
9447       <div class="date">
9448         28th April 2009
9449       </div>
9450       <div class="body">
9451         <p>Julien Blache
9452 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9453 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9454 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9455 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9456 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9457 properties.</p>
9458
9459       </div>
9460       <div class="tags">
9461
9462
9463         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>.
9464
9465
9466       </div>
9467     </div>
9468     <div class="padding"></div>
9469
9470     <div class="entry">
9471       <div class="title">
9472         <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>
9473       </div>
9474       <div class="date">
9475         30th March 2009
9476       </div>
9477       <div class="body">
9478         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9479 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
9480 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9481 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9482 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9483 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9484 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9485 application.</p>
9486
9487 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9488 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
9489 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9490 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
9491 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9492 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9493 blocked from doing so.</p>
9494
9495 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9496 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9497 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9498 requirements change.</p>
9499
9500 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9501 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9502 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
9503
9504       </div>
9505       <div class="tags">
9506
9507
9508         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>.
9509
9510
9511       </div>
9512     </div>
9513     <div class="padding"></div>
9514
9515     <div class="entry">
9516       <div class="title">
9517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
9518       </div>
9519       <div class="date">
9520         29th March 2009
9521       </div>
9522       <div class="body">
9523         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9524 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
9525 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9526 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
9527 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9528 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
9529 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9530 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
9531 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9532 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
9533 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
9534 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9535 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
9536 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
9537 now. :)</p>
9538
9539       </div>
9540       <div class="tags">
9541
9542
9543         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>.
9544
9545
9546       </div>
9547     </div>
9548     <div class="padding"></div>
9549
9550     <div class="entry">
9551       <div class="title">
9552         <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>
9553       </div>
9554       <div class="date">
9555         29th March 2009
9556       </div>
9557       <div class="body">
9558         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9559 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9560 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
9561 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
9562 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9563 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
9564
9565 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
9566 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9567 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9568 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
9569 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
9570 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
9571 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
9572 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
9573 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
9574 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
9575 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
9576 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
9577 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
9578
9579 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
9580 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
9581 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
9582 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
9583
9584 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
9585 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
9586
9587 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
9588 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
9589 new IETF work group?</p>
9590
9591       </div>
9592       <div class="tags">
9593
9594
9595         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>.
9596
9597
9598       </div>
9599     </div>
9600     <div class="padding"></div>
9601
9602     <div class="entry">
9603       <div class="title">
9604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
9605       </div>
9606       <div class="date">
9607         15th February 2009
9608       </div>
9609       <div class="body">
9610         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
9611 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
9612 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
9613 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
9614 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
9615 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
9616 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
9617 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
9618 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
9619 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
9620 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
9621 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
9622
9623       </div>
9624       <div class="tags">
9625
9626
9627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9628
9629
9630       </div>
9631     </div>
9632     <div class="padding"></div>
9633
9634     <div class="entry">
9635       <div class="title">
9636         <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>
9637       </div>
9638       <div class="date">
9639          7th December 2008
9640       </div>
9641       <div class="body">
9642         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
9643 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
9644 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
9645 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
9646 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
9647 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
9648 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
9649 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
9650
9651 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
9652 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
9653 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
9654 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
9655 of these cards.</p>
9656
9657       </div>
9658       <div class="tags">
9659
9660
9661         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>.
9662
9663
9664       </div>
9665     </div>
9666     <div class="padding"></div>
9667
9668     <div class="entry">
9669       <div class="title">
9670         <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>
9671       </div>
9672       <div class="date">
9673         25th November 2008
9674       </div>
9675       <div class="body">
9676         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
9677 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
9678 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
9679 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
9680 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
9681 notes are available on
9682 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
9683 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
9684 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
9685 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
9686 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
9687 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
9688 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
9689 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
9690 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
9691
9692 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
9693 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
9694
9695       </div>
9696       <div class="tags">
9697
9698
9699         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>.
9700
9701
9702       </div>
9703     </div>
9704     <div class="padding"></div>
9705
9706     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
9707     <div id="sidebar">
9708
9709
9710
9711 <h2>Archive</h2>
9712 <ul>
9713
9714 <li>2016
9715 <ul>
9716
9717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9718
9719 </ul></li>
9720
9721 <li>2015
9722 <ul>
9723
9724 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9725
9726 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9727
9728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
9729
9730 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
9731
9732 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9733
9734 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
9735
9736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
9737
9738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9739
9740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
9741
9742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9743
9744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
9745
9746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9747
9748 </ul></li>
9749
9750 <li>2014
9751 <ul>
9752
9753 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9754
9755 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
9756
9757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
9758
9759 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9760
9761 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
9762
9763 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9764
9765 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
9766
9767 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9768
9769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9770
9771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
9772
9773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9774
9775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
9776
9777 </ul></li>
9778
9779 <li>2013
9780 <ul>
9781
9782 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
9783
9784 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
9785
9786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
9787
9788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
9789
9790 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9791
9792 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
9793
9794 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9795
9796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9797
9798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9799
9800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
9801
9802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
9803
9804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9805
9806 </ul></li>
9807
9808 <li>2012
9809 <ul>
9810
9811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9812
9813 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
9814
9815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
9816
9817 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
9818
9819 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
9820
9821 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
9822
9823 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
9824
9825 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9826
9827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
9828
9829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
9830
9831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
9832
9833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9834
9835 </ul></li>
9836
9837 <li>2011
9838 <ul>
9839
9840 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
9841
9842 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9843
9844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
9845
9846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9847
9848 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9849
9850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9851
9852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9853
9854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9855
9856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
9857
9858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9859
9860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9861
9862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
9863
9864 </ul></li>
9865
9866 <li>2010
9867 <ul>
9868
9869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9870
9871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
9872
9873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
9874
9875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
9876
9877 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9878
9879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
9880
9881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
9882
9883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
9884
9885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
9886
9887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9888
9889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
9890
9891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
9892
9893 </ul></li>
9894
9895 <li>2009
9896 <ul>
9897
9898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
9899
9900 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
9901
9902 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
9903
9904 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
9905
9906 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9907
9908 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
9909
9910 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
9911
9912 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9913
9914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
9915
9916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9917
9918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9919
9920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9921
9922 </ul></li>
9923
9924 <li>2008
9925 <ul>
9926
9927 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
9928
9929 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9930
9931 </ul></li>
9932
9933 </ul>
9934
9935
9936
9937 <h2>Tags</h2>
9938 <ul>
9939
9940  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
9941
9942  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
9943
9944  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
9945
9946  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
9947
9948  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
9949
9950  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
9951
9952  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
9953
9954  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
9955
9956  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (117)</a></li>
9957
9958  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
9959
9960  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
9961
9962  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
9963
9964  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
9965
9966  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
9967
9968  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (299)</a></li>
9969
9970  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
9971
9972  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
9973
9974  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (25)</a></li>
9975
9976  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
9977
9978  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
9979
9980  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
9981
9982  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
9983
9984  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
9985
9986  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
9987
9988  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
9989
9990  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
9991
9992  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
9993
9994  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
9995
9996  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
9997
9998  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
9999
10000  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (6)</a></li>
10001
10002  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (273)</a></li>
10003
10004  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
10005
10006  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
10007
10008  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10009
10010  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
10011
10012  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10013
10014  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10015
10016  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10017
10018  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10019
10020  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10021
10022  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10023
10024  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10025
10026  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10027
10028  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10029
10030  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (45)</a></li>
10031
10032  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10033
10034  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10035
10036  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
10037
10038  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
10039
10040  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10041
10042  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10043
10044  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10045
10046  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10047
10048  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10049
10050  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
10051
10052  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10053
10054  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10055
10056 </ul>
10057
10058
10059     </div>
10060     <p style="text-align: right">
10061  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
10062 </p>
10063
10064   </body>
10065 </html>